The Peasant Of The Garonne An Old Catholic Layman Questions Himself About Modern Times Maritain

THE PEASANT
OF THE GARONNE

* a

An Old Layman Questions Himself
about the Present Time

i

Holt, Rinehart and Winston

New York Chicago San Francisco

CONTENTS

Preface, p. ix
1 A. D. 1966, p. 1

1430092

Thanksgiving, p. 1

Three contradictory descriptions, p. 4

2 Our Cockeyed Times, p. 12

Itching Ears, p. 12

Epistemological time-worship, p. 12
Logophobia, p. 14

Contemporary Trends, Especially the Trends of
“Left” and “Right,” p. 21

At the time of the “Letter on Independence,” p. 21
Today, p. 24

3 The World and Its Contrasting Aspects, p. 28

The Religious or “Mystical” Truth Concerning the World In Its
Relation With the Kingdom of God, p. 28
God so loved the world, p. 29
The world hates me, p. 32
Some conclusions, p. 35
The “Ontosophic” Truth, p. 38

Concerning the world in its natural structures, p. 38
The natural end of the world, p. 40
On the temporal mission of the Christian, p. 41
A Long Misunderstanding With Bitter Fruit, p. 44
. Speculative vocabulary and practical vocabulary, p. 44

The “contempt of the world” and its perilous vicissitudes, p. 46
Schema XIII, p. 50

The Teaching Church Has Put An End to the Long
Misunderstanding, p. 50

VI

CONTENTS

Kneeling Before the World, p. 53

Factual behavior and thought more or less confused, p. 53
The Saints and the world, p. 58
The insane mistake, p. 60

4 The True New Fire — Christians and Non-Christians, p. 64

The announcement of a new age, p. 64
Practical cooperation in a divided world, p. 65
Brotherly love among men who are all (at least potentially)
members of Christ, p. 70
Two short anecdotes, p. 78
The law of the cross, p. 79

5 The True New Fire — The Liberation of the
Intelligence, p. 84

Preliminary notice, p. 84
The Truth, p. 87

A few words on the capacity of human reason, p. 94

Philosophy and ideosophy, p. 98

The liberation of philosophic eros, p. 104

Contemporary phenomenology, p. 107

The need for fables or intellectual false currency, p. 112

Teilhard de Chardin and Teilhardism, p. 116

6 The True New Fire — The Requests and Renewals
of Genuine Knowledge, p. 127

A great wise man, p. 127

The intuition of Being and the contemplation of Being itself
subsisting by itself, p. 132
The philosophy of St. Thomas, p. 135
Philosophy and theology, p. 141
Truth and freedom, p. 166
Vita'i lampada tradunt , p. 170

7 The True New Fire — The Affairs of God's Kingdom, p. 174

The One and Holy, p. 174

The personality of the Church, p. 175
The Church, Bride and mystical Body, p. 176

CONTENTS vii

The Church, kingdom of God begun here on earth, p. 183
The Church, Holy and Penitent, p. 185
The Church, People of God, p. 189
Contemplation in the World, p. 194
By way of introduction, p. 194

A digression (on the temporal mission of the Christian), p. 198
Another digression (on the condition of the layman) and
the end of the introduction, p. 205
The two necessary aids on the never-ending road, p. 213
Liturgy, p. 214
Contemplation, p. 220

The diversity of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, p. 229
Contemplation on the roads, p. 232
The Disciples — James and John, p. 254
The True Face of God, or Love and the Law
(text by Raissa), p. 257

Appendices, p. 261

1 On a text of Saint Paul, p. 261

2 On two studies concerning the theology of
Pere Teilhard, p. 264

3 A short epistemological digression, p. 270

4 On the unity and visibility of the Church, p. 274

PREFACE

The subtitle of this book needs no explanation. I
will merely note that in the expression "an old lay-
man” the word "old” has a twofold meaning: it says
that the author is an octogenarian, and that he is an
inveterate layman.

As for the title, it is explained by the fact that
there is no Danube in France, and that the Little
Brothers of Jesus, with whom I stay, live at Toulouse
on the Garonne River. Consequently, given my pur-
pose, I considered the Garonne a suitable equivalent
for the Danube. A peasant of the Danube— or of the
Garonne— is, as anyone who has read La Fontaine
knows, a man who puts his foot in his mouth, or
who calls a spade a spade. This is what, in all mod-
esty, and not without fearing to be unequal to the
task (less easy, to be sure, than one might believe),
I would like to attempt.

December 31, 1965

Jacques Maritain

I

A. D. 1966

THANKSGIVING

I turn first to the holy visible Church (she is, I realize, invisible as
well), the Roman Catholic Church, which on December 8, 1965,
brought to a close her second Vatican Council. Where does this holy
Church find herself visibly manifested in her universality? In the ecu-
menical assembly which is the Council, and in the individual person
who is the Pope, the first taking its existence and full authority from
the second; both assisted by the spirit of God, clothed in the white-
ness of truth, and crowned with charisms that bring on this poor earth
some reflections of Eternal Light. And in beholding the Church, I
kneel (thats a vanishing custom, but so much the worse) in pro-
found thanksgiving.

For everything the Council has decreed and accomplished, I give
thanks. For still other things I would doubtless have liked to give
thanks if the Council had also done them. But it was obviously not
called to do those things: from the beginning, and by the will of John
XXIII himself, it was pastoral rather than doctrinal (although it de-
voted two of its Constitutions to important points of doctrine). And
it is clear that this was in response to a providential design; for
the historic task, the immense renewal that it had to bring about, had
to do with progress in evangelical awareness and attitudes of the heart
rather than with defining dogmas.

Good heavens, weren't these dogmas defined, once and for all?
(For the new dogmatic definitions that come with time simply make
explicit and complete the old ones; they don’t change them in any
way.) Wasn’t the Church’s doctrine established with certitude, and
on bases solid enough to permit endless progress, by all the preceding
Councils and by a oenturies-old labor? What man, having received
theological faith, could be foolish enough to imagine that eternal

2

JACQUES M ARITAIN

certitudes would begin to waver, to grow hollow with doubts and
question marks, to dissolve themselves in the stream of time?

No one, however, has to look very far to marvel at the resources of
human foolishness, and to understand that foolishness and theologi-
cal faith can certainly keep house in the same brain, and hold a dia-
logue there— as everybody is doing now with everybody else— even
though such contact is likely to prove unhealthy for the latter.

I will have to come back to this, although it scarcely amuses me, in
order to say something about the neo-modernism that flourishes
today.

For the moment, I would like to continue my thanksgiving in
peace.

☆

It is a joy to think that the true idea of freedom— of that freedom
to which man aspires in his profoundest self, and which is one of the
privileges of the spirit— is henceforth recognized and given a place of
honor among the great germinal ideas of Christian wisdom; and like-
wise the true idea of the human person, and of his dignity and his
rights.

It is a joy to think that religious freedom has now been proclaimed,
— this is not any freedom to believe or not to believe according to my
momentary disposition, and to fashion an idol at my pleasure, as if I
did not have a fundamental obligation to Truth; it is the freedom that
each human person has, in the face of the State or any temporal power
whatever, to watch over his eternal destiny while seeking truth with
all his soul and complying with it as he knows it, and to obey what
his conscience holds as true in matters of religion (my conscience is
not infallible but I never have the right to act against it). And at the
same time it was proclaiming religious freedom, the Council placed in
a new light, which our time particularly needs, the sacred treasures of
Catholic doctrine concerning the Church and Revelation.

It is a joy to think that the Church, with increasing vigor and a new
accent, enjoins us to treat really as brothers— as brothers whose friend-
ship is for us an invaluable gift, and for whom our zeal to save their
souls does not require that we convert them into ashes if they are
heretics, but in each of whom we should honor the human race, and
see Christ's gaze on them and on ourselves— yes, treat as brothers all

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

3

those whom we know more or less distant from the Truth, whether
they are Christians who do not accept the Catholic Creed, or the
faithful of a non-Christian religion, or atheists. The Council especially
noted that such fraternal sentiments are due the Jewish people; anti-
Semitism is an anti-Christian aberration.

It is a joy to think that the Church recognizes and declares more ex-
plicitly than ever the vsjue, beauty, and dignity of this world which,
nevertheless, she sees “in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19),
insofar as it refuses to be redeemed— this world with all those goods of
nature which bear the mark of their Creator's generosity, and of which
many, however, are at one time or another tom from us by the holy
Cross, in view of other goods that invisibly bring heaven to earth.

It is a joy to think that the Church, which as such is occupied solely
with the spiritual domain, or with things quae sunt Dei , affirms and
blesses the temporal mission of the Christian.

It is a joy to think that the Church has now emphatically high-
lighted the status of her lay members. Of course, it has always been
known that laymen belonged to the mystical Body of Christ, but
they have long been believed tied to the follies of the age, and to a
state, if I may say so, normally recognized as Christian imperfection.
It is now clear to all that insofar as they are members of the mystical
Body, they too are called to the perfection of charity and the wisdom
of the Holy Spirit, and to the labors through which the kingdom of
God is expanded. Besides, as members of the earthly city, who work
directly on their own responsibility and initiative for the well-being
and progress of the temporal order, it is normally up to them to instill
into such a work what can be transmitted of the spirit of the Gospel,
and of the intelligence and wisdom that reason and faith together
sustain.

It is a joy to think that the Pope “neither wants to nor ought to ex-
ercise henceforth any power other than that of his spiritual keys,” 1
and that at the summit of the Church's towers he watches, in union
with the efforts of bishops of the entire world, to maintain intact the
immense treasure of truth with which Christ's Church is entrusted,
while fully carrying out in its integrity the immeasurably significant
renewal launched by the Council.

☆

1 Paul VI, Discourse to the Roman Nobility , January 14, 1964.

4

JACQUES MARITAIN

In truth, every vestige of the Holy Empire is today liquidated; we
have definitely emerged from the sacral age and* the baroque age.
After sixteen centuries 2 which it would be shameful to slander or
claim to repudiate, but which have completed their death agony and
whose grave defects were incontestable, a new age begins; the Church
invites us to understand better the goodness and the humanity 3 of
God our Father, and calls us to recognize at the same time all the
dimensions of that hominem integrum whom the Pope spoke of in
his discourse of December 7, 1965, at the last meeting of the Council.

Here is accomplished the great reversal of virtue of which it is no
longer the human which takes charge of defending the divine, but the
divine which offers itself to defend the human (if the latter does not
refuse the aid offered).

The Church has broken the ties which pretended to protect her,
and has rid herself of burdens which people used to think equipped
her better for the work of salvation. Free henceforth from these bur-
dens and these ties, she mirrors better the true face of God, which is
Love, and for herself asks only liberty. 4 She spreads her wings of light.

Will they shelter our cities and our fields if the world, for its part,
decides to leave her truly free? Or will they serve her to flee to the
desert, if the world sets itself against her in order to enslave her and
bind her in chains? These things are not predetermined in human his-
tory, they depend on our unforeseeable choices.

THREE CONTRADICTORY DESCRIPTIONS

One of the fundamental axioms of a sane philosophy of history, I
have often noted, is that the history of the world progresses at the
same time in the line of evil and in the line of good. In certain periods
—our own, for example— one sees the effects of this simultaneous
double progress erupting in a kind of explosion. This does not make it
easy to describe these moments in man's history. It then becomes
necessary to propose several contradictory descriptions, all of which
will be true. Moreover, the three descriptions I would like to propose

2 My reckoning begins with the century of Constantine (the Edict of Milan,
313). It is a simplification which I believe permissible.

3 Benignitas et humanitas (<t>i\av0p<*nrla) Salvatoris nostri Dei (Tit. 3:4).

4 Paul VI, Message to the Heads of Government , December 8, 1965.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

5

touch only on certain aspects of our time, those of spiritual order.

Let us turn no longer to the holy Church visibly manifested in her
universality, let us turn to the Western world (I speak of it because I
know it a little less badly than I do the others), and let us think of the
workings which are taking place in its depths. It appears to be a great
age. The rationalist and positivist visions of the universe seem com-
pletely out-of-date, people are sick of them (let us forget for a mo-
ment that there are worse visions). An immense spiritual ferment,
immense religious aspirations are at work. Souls are hungry for au-
thenticity, frankness, devotion to a common task; they discover with a
kind of intoxication the mystery of the human being, the possibilities
and the demands of fraternal love. It is like a nostalgia for the Gospel
and for Jesus.

And there, where a nearer and more urgent call is heard— be it in
relatively limited sectors, though more populous than one thinks, be
it sometimes in very tiny flocks, but whose initiatives count more than
anything (poor contemporaries of the atomic bomb, what is facing os
is the power of micro-actions) *— we find a burning and purified faith,
a passion for the absolute, a fervent presentiment of the liberty, the
breadth and variety of the ways of God, a whole-hearted longing for
the perfection of charity, all of which are seeking and finding for us
new means of giving our lives to bear witness to the love of Jesus for
all men and to the generosity of God's spirit

☆

So much for the first description. The second says completely the
opposite. When one considers the neo-modem ist ® fever (I was
bound to mention this sooner or later), very contagious, at least in
circles described as "intellectual," compared to which the modernism
of Piux X's time was only a modest hayfever, and which finds expres-
sion above all in the most advanced thinkers among our Protestant

* The saints have always known this — they had read the Gospel.

• The word modernism has aged, but nevertheless l do not know a better; and
to have aged makes it especially good: for nothing ages so quickly as fashion, and
those theories which make froth or its ococertaal formulations a function of time.
The “peispectrrttm” pretend* t>ot to be mo&emisfr because it holds that a simitax
unalterable troth can be expressed by conceptual formulas fiacompatible with each
other which come successively to the surface in the course of time. Let us leave it
to its illimoai.

6

JACQUES MARITAIN

brothers , 7 but is also active in equally advanced Catholic thinkers,
this second description gives us the picture 8 of a kind of “imma-
nent” apostasy (that is, which intends to remain Christian at all
costs). In preparation for many years, hastened by certain veiled
hopes of the repressed regions of the soul which were stirred up here
and there on the occasion of the Council, the manifold manifestation
of this apostasy is sometimes falsely ascribed to the “spirit of the
Council,” or even to the “spirit of John XXIII.” We know well to
whom it is proper to trace the paternity of such lies (and so much the
better if in this way man finds himself a little exonerated). But the
point is, people no longer believe in the devil and in the bad angels,
nor the good ones, naturally. They are only ethereal survivors of some
Babylonian imagery.

In such a nice perspective, the objective content to which the faith
of our forefathers clung, all that is myth, like original sin for example,
(isn't our big job today to get rid of the horrendous guilt complex?),
and like the Gospel of the Infancy of Christ, the resurrection of the
body, and the creation. And the Christ of history, of course. The
phenomenological method and form criticism have changed every-
thing. The distinction between human nature and grace is a scholastic
invention like transubstantiation. As for hell, why take the trouble to
deny it, it is simpler to forget it, and that's probably what we had also
better do with the Incarnation and the Trinity. Frankly, do the mass
of our Christians ever think of these things, or of the immortal soul
and the future life? As for the Cross and the Redemption, ultimate
sublimation of ancient myths and sacrificial rites, we should consider
them as the great and stirring symbols, forever inscribed in our imagi-
nation, of the labor and collective sacrifices needed to bring nature
and humanity to the degree of unification and spiritualization — and of
power over matter — where they will be delivered at last from all the
old servitudes and will enter into a kind of glory. Will death then be

7 The divergences and conflicts of ideas are as vast among Protestants as
Catholics, and it could be that Taiz£, for example, can give the latter some useful
lessons.

8 What I have brought together in this picture are not the views of honest
seekers, but of extremists whose names are well known to experts on these matters,
along with the opinions which prevail in the milieux influenced by them — for
example, among some priests who boast of no longer genuflecting before the
tabernacle.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

7

vanquished? Perhaps science will discover how to make us immortal.
(Why not? Descartes was already dreaming of it.) However, that is
not what matters; what matters is the everlastingness of the cosmos,
and the immortality of humanity glorified in it and with it.

Our faith, having been thus duly emptied of every specific object,
finally can become what it really was, a simple sublimating aspiration;
we can be lifted up to a stat£ of complete euphoria by a powerful in-
take of air, recite* with an enlightened fervor the Symbol (Creed) of
the Apostles (symbol, what a predestined name!) and love, serve and
adore Jesus with all our hearts, the Jesus of faith and of an interior,
truly visceral Christianity.

For with all this one is more Christian than ever. All these people
have simply ceased to believe in Truth, and believe only in verisimili-
tudes pinned to some truths (that is, statements or verifications of
observable detail) which moreover grow obsolete overnight. Truth
with a capital T, what does that mean? Quid est Veritas? We should
recognize that Pilate got the picture, and that this procurator was a
good “progressist.” One must use lower case letters everywhere.
“Everything is relative, that is the only absolute principle”— as our
Father Auguste Comte has already put it. We are done with classical
positivism, true enough. But the fact remains that we live in Comte’s
world: Science (the side of reason) completed by Myth (the side of
sentiment). He has been a prophet of the first order.

I might add that he was more honest than you, studious expurga-
tors of revealed truths. He at least fabricated the myths of his “subjec-
tive synthesis” fairly and squarely out of whole cloth, not, like you, by
reinterpreting a whole religious heritage to which you believe yourself
more faithful than anyone, nor by trying to deceive the thirst, and the
heart, of those whose faith you imagine you share.

*

This second description gives a more complete idea of our era.
With it, however, we are still far from exhausting the subject. We
must make a third, which in its turn will reveal other aspects. We
know well that we cannot restrict ourselves to the words men utter
in tire universe of logic, to what they are and do as evidenced by the
conceptual terms they use; we must take into consideration what oc-

8

JACQUES M ARITAIN

cupies the depths of their psyche, what they are and do in the wholly
singular domain of the irreducibly subjective and irrational, even that
which at times escapes their own awareness.

From this viewpoint, one can immediately observe that among all
those who speak like Pilate, there are surely many who have not
deliberately refused that desire for Truth without which one is not a
man. Among all the men of science whose sole concern seems to be
inventing new approaches or hypotheses, there are surely many who in
reality, whatever they may say, do not prefer seeking to finding.
Would they put so much care and toil into seeking verifications of a
passing day if, in the unconscious or supra-conscious regions of their
minds, they were not seeking and loving the Truth without realizing
it themselves?

But what is most important to notice, on the other hand, is that the
frenzied modernism of today is incurably ambivalent. Its natural
bent, although it would deny it, is to ruin the Christian faith. Yes, it
busies itself as best it can to empty the faith of any content. But along
with that, among a good number of its adherents, there is something
like an effort to render to this faith a kind of desperate witness. It is
certainly with sincerity, and sometimes in the fever and anguish of a
fundamentally religious soul, that the leaders of our neo-modernism
declare themselves Christians. Let us not forget that they are victims
of a certain pre-accepted philosophy, a Grand Sophistry (we know
Being , on condition that it is put in parenthesis and abstracted out of
sight). I will have a word to say about this in another chapter . 9 This
permits people to speak intelligently, while playing on our heart-
strings, about a whole armload of things which positivism had placed
under interdict, and is far more successful than positivism in prevent-
ing us from finding the least extramental reality in them, the least
that exists independently of our mind. There is nothing left for the
intellect to do but discourse on verisimilitudes, the cost of which is
borne by what 'takes place in human subjectivity. To affirm the exist-
ence of a transcendent God becomes from this moment a non-sense.
Divine transcendence is only the mythical projection of a certain col-
lective fear experienced by man at a given moment in his history. In
general, according to the pre-accepted philosophy to which I am
alluding, everything that tastes of a world other than the world of man

9 Cf. Ch. 5, p. 106.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

9

can only fall under the head of the out-of-date if it is a question of the
"background world” of poor philosophic realists, or, of the Myth if it
is a question of the supernatural world of religions.

This is the intelligible heaven, the Denkmittel accepted as self-
evident (that is to say, as demanded by the age), and the taboos to
which our most liberal J(th4t is to say the most conformist) theolo-
gians and exegetes have submitted their thought. Poor "sophisticated”
Christians, it is Socrates they would need.

One has to be quite naive to enlist in the service of such a philoso-
phy if one has the Christian faith (which is nothing without the
Word— infinitely independent of human subjectivity— of a revealing
God who is infinitely independent of our mind). This is especially so
if one belongs to the Catholic religion, which of all religions (along
with the religion of Israel — benedicite , omnia opera Domini, Dom-
ino) is most steadfast in recognizing and affirming the reality— irre-
docibly, splendidly, generously in itself — of the beings whom the
Creator has made, and the transcendence of this Other, who is the
Truth in person and Being itself subsisting by itself, in whom we live
and move and have our being, 10 the living God by whose strength we
live, 11 and who loves us and whom we love. For to love is to give what
one is, his very being, in the most absolute, the most brazenly meta-
physical, the least phenomenalizable sense of this word. But we must
put all this in parentheses, too, mustn't we, if we are to follow the
new golden rule? And once someone has been taken in hand, and sur-
rounded on all sides by the so-called philosophy in which he has put
his trust, what can become of him if he does not side with those who
flatly deny Christ? With a soul split between doubt and a nostalgic
tenacity— and a pity full of fright for the modem world, in which a
total reshaping of religion seems the last bulwark against atheism— it
will become necessary to set out in search of heroic remedies to en-
able faith in Jesus Christ to survive in a mental climate essentially in-
compatible with it. Why be astonished that so many modernists
believe they have a mission to save a dying Christianity — their dying
Christianity for the modern world? It is for this goal that, as good
soldiers of Christ, they devote themselves to such an exhausting work

1# A ct 4 17:28.

11 Cor. 13:4.

10

JACQUES M ARITAIN

of hermeneutic evacuation. Even their fideism, contrary as it is to
Christian faith, is nevertheless a sincere and tortured witness to this
faith.

Clothed in the panoply of God, shod with zeal, armed with the
breastplate of justice, the helmet of salvation, the shield of the faith,
and the sword of the spirit? This armor of Saint Paul 12 is certainly
not for them, it is only a museum piece. I see them, rather, hanging
by one hand from Jacob's ladder, kicking wildly all the while, and,
with their free hand, tossing one another telescripts of the most
recent hypotheses. You can't deny it's daring, but look out for cramps.

The author of Honest to God 13 is an Anglican bishop, so totally
disheartened by the religious indifference of his contemporaries that
in his struggle to help them he accommodates divine things in a way
that will become acceptable to them and will at last awaken their
appetite. He, too, is a fighter for the faith. If he offers us a dog-tired
Christianity which goes along with the stream (his famous ‘'Christi-
anity without religion"), it is because he is a worried and helpless
good Samaritan who wants so much to save addicts that he opens a
shop where he can give them all free drugs in capsules and packets
labeled “to the Divine Lamb." And man is such a bizarre animal— it
could happen, after all, that one of these addicts, at the hour of his
death, might take comfort in thinking that someone loved him, and
remember the name of Jesus.

From quite another point of view, we may note finally that if
temporal activity and the necessary transformations called for by the
present state of the world seem to fascinate a good many young
Christians, both clergy and laymen, to such an extent that this alone
counts in their eyes, and that they passionately undertake to secularize
their Christianity completely— from now on, everything for the earth!
—yet their fundamental motive, to which they blindly give complete
priority, is actually a burning desire to make the witness of the Gospel
enter history. Again the oddness of human nature: it is with a worried

12 Eph. 6:13-17.

19 It is known that this work was published in France through the efforts of a
review, a little Machiavellian in its orthodoxy, with the idea of turning people away
from modernism by making them see the final aberration to which it was leading
them, from surrender to surrender. To the surprise and chagrin of the publishers,
the book revealed itself an extraordinary best-seller, everybody threw themselves
on it enthusiastically.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

11

faith, quite insufficiently enlightened, and yet profoundly sincere in
Jesus Christ, that they betray the Gospel by dint of serving it— after
their fashion.

☆

The three descriptions I have proposed are mutually contradictory
yet equally true, because all three, while including, in a certain sense,
the mass of our contemporaries, do not aim at the same polarities in
men’s souls. Frankly, I'm fed up with such descriptions, and I have no
intention of making a sociological or clinical portrait of my times. I
question myself, not as to the value of our times, but as to the values
which have an impact on them. It is not our era that worries me, but
the ideas one runs into at every street corner, some of which could
certainly stand a good scrubbing. Before starting to discuss ideas and
problems, however, I would like to make two more remarks 14 re-
garding the collective behavior we observe today.

14 Each will constitute a section of the next chapter.

2 OUR COCKEYED TIMES

Itching Ears

EPISTEMOLOGICAL TIME-WORSHIP

This is the sickness announced by Saint Paul for a time to come
( erit enim tempus . . .), but from which no time, it seems, has been
completely immune. As a matter of fact, our own time seems to have
broken all records handsomely.

It should be noted that Saint Paul makes professors play a central
role in the spread of the sickness. A time will come, he tells us , 1 when
men will be taken in tow by a crowd of didaskaloi because their ears
will itch. In other words, this sickness— which is very contagious, to
judge from appearances— will have its breeding ground among the
experts or the professors. And the itching in the ears will become so
general that no one will be able to hear the truth any longer, and men
will turn to fables — epi tous muthous, writes Saint Paul, to myths. But
hold on, aren't these the precious myths on which we're gorging our-
selves? Of course they are, but they are not the great venerable myths
of the youth of mankind. Our craving is for the myths of decay, a
sterile and synthetic lot (the work of professors)— in particular the
myths of demythizing. (I shall make use of this word, which is now
current in French jargon.)

Was it to cure these morbid cravings that Pere Ubu (the funny
ogre invented by a famous French humorist) threatened to “box our
ears"? A sorry remedy, since it is from malnutrition and a serious
vitamin deficiency that our illness comes in the first place.

Here, it seems to me, is the moment to call attention briefly to
two major symptoms. The first symptom, and the one that concerns
me here, is an obsessive fixation on the passing of time, epistemologi-

1 “Erit enim tempus, cum sanam doctrinam non sustinebunt, sed ad sua desideria
coaceivabunt sibi magistros, prurientes auribus. Et a veritate quidem auditum
avertent, ad fabulas autem convertentur.” (2 Tim. 4:3-4.)

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

*3

cal time-worship. To be passe is to be banished to Sheol. Could an
author who is pass6 have said something true? After all, it's not in-
conceivable. But anyway, it's irrelevant because, since he is pass£, what
he said no longer exists.

This chronolatry entails vast human sacrifices— in other terms it
carries with it a component of masochism. To think of the admirable
abnegation (not modesty, probably, but a wish to be drowned in
time) of a contemporary biblical scholar is enough to make one's
head spin. He kills himself with work, he gives his life's blood, only to
find himself passe in two years. And this will continue all his life.
And when he dies, he will be pas s6 for good. His work will merely en-
able others to pass him by and then be passed by in their turn. But of
his own thought, not a trace will remain.

We do not find such masochistic abnegation among philosophers,
because fashion, in their case, lasts somewhat longer (twenty years,
perhaps, thirty in the most favourable instances). They have time to
spin themselves some illusions, they can hope that at least during
their own lifetime they will not become passe. What is surprising is
the form that epistemological time-worship takes with them. Each
takes his turn calling into question, in order to innovate, what his
immediate predecessors (incurably passe from that moment) have
said, but for nothing in the world would he dream of calling into ques-
tion the work achieved prior to them by Time— at least in the line of
descent leading to him. As to the philosophical lines of descent prior
to his own, he doesn't give a hoot for them (they are pass6); but as
he sees it, the line leading to him is there (at least in the sense that it
continues to engender), and that is all he needs; he has no need to
know whether at the start it was or was not lacking in truth. 2 The
point which the curve has reached just before him is the only base
from which he can begin; it is sacred and unquestionable.

In one form or another, it is always the adoration of the ephemeral,
whether to be devoured by it, or to accept, with eyes closed, what it

2 Of course, it is always in discovering new horizons that a great philosopher
loses his bead. In otbeT words, if a shortcoming which will cause everything to
deviate occurred at the start of his line of descent, there were, at the same time,
potential gain* that demanded (in vain) to be actualized in a true perspective.
And the wise men who could have integrated them with their treasures were
perhaps Sleeping on the latter; or possibly they were busy giving courses to dis-
tracted students, or disputing one another. But all that is another story. . . .

i4 JACQUES M ARITAIN

has engendered (in the line of descent leading to him) up to the
time he enters the list himself.

By being concerned for truth, and by grasping it, the spirit tran-
scends time. To make the things of the spirit pass under the law of
the ephemeral— which is the law of matter and the purely biological
—to act as if the spirit were subject to the lord of the flies, is the first
sign, the first major symptom of the sickness denounced by Saint
Paul.

LOGOPHOBIA

The other symptom which I would like to point out is the degrada-
tion that takes place in the nature of the rational animal when he
begins to lose confidence not only in philosophic knowledge but in
the spontaneous pre-philosophy which is for man like a gift of nature
included in that indispensable equipment we call common sense,
and which is concealed as much as it is expressed by everyday lan-
guage. Let us beware when we hear denigrated, on the pretext that
they are “linguistic categories,” those primary notions which men
would be quite embarrassed to justify precisely because they are the
result of primitive intuitions, born in the preconscious of the spirit,
but which are at the roots of human life (when it is truly human).
When everyone starts scorning these things, obscurely perceived by
the instinct of the spirit, such as good and evil, moral obligation,
justice, law, or even extra-mental reality, truth, the distinction be-
tween substance and accident, the principle of identity— it means that
everyone is beginning to lose his head.

Let them invoke the slogan of linguistic categories as much as they
like. It is not language that makes concepts, but concepts that make
language. And the language that expresses them always more or less
betrays them. There are primitive languages that have no word for
the idea of being, but that is a far cry from saying that those who
speak them do not have this idea in their mind.

And there are never words for what it would be most important for
us to say. Isn't it because of that that we need poets and musicians?

Language fouls and cheapens all the primary notions and intui-
tions I have just mentioned: if they are theoretical, by the practical

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

>5

use it makes of them in the routines of daily life; if they are of the
moral order, by the social use it makes of them in the rites of the
tribe, superadding to them extrinsic meanings which have no value
for the mind in quest of truth.

The 6rst duty of philosophers would be to scour carefully all these
notions in order to uncover the purity of their authentic meaning —
a diamond hidden under rubbish— which is dependent on being, not
on human usage. But as a rule, 5 philosophers take good care not to
wear themselves out with such cleansing; and our children of Des-
cartes prefer to carry on with their easier and more profitable task of
destroying reason with their Grand Sophistry, their parenthesizing of
reality and their Phenomenalizing of philosophic knowledge itself,
for which they would like so much to find a place in the amusement
park, the night clubs and the dream factories of the world of technoc-
racy. In the final count, because people read philosophers, the philos-
ophers foster in their minds a corrosive doubt about the value of that
pre-philosophy which people are constantly obliged to use, but in
which they are believing less and less.

Furthermore, while the idea of authentic philosophic knowledge
is disappearing from our cultural universe, and the regime of truth to
be earnestly beheld is undergoing eclipse, we are confronted with the
dazzling advent of modern science with its symbolic language— and of
that approach to the real which has in common with magic the trait of
handling and mastering, through signs, what remains unknown in
itself— and of that mathematization of the observable (especially in
physics) which has made possible prodigious successes but (in spite
of the genuine intellectual concerns of many scientists) submits the
mind to the rule of verification to be performed. All of this leads
everyone, learned and ignorant (and even the unfortunate philoso-
phers), to believe that science— the science of phenomena— is alone
capable of bringing us the certainty of rational knowledge. And all
this also causes people to doubt the value of the spontaneous pre-
philosophy expressed by the language of common sense.

Result: this pre-philosophy is disintegrating; and in terms of the
primordial conditions laid down by his nature in the exercise of his
reason, man becomes similar to an animal that has lost its instincts,
to a bee that no longer has the instinct to make its honey, to penguins

3 Except for some arc Thoinists. . . .

i6

JACQUES MARITAIN

and albatrosses that no longer have the instinct to build their nests.

Nevertheless, as disoriented as we are, we must go on thinking any-
way. Quickly then, and whatever it costs, let's have anything what-
ever to replace the effort we can no longer muster; bring on the
fables! There you have the second major symptom I wanted to point
out, and the form, malignant to be sure, of that ear-itching which par-
ticularly afflicts our times.

☆

I know very well that more or less comparable forms of the same
sickness have appeared before, particularly at the time of the Sophists
and Socrates. In that era, it was not faith that this sickness threat-
ened, but reason— not our blase reason of today, but reason in the
springtime of its great self-discovery, of its great cultural victory in the
history of mankind. Wasn't it required that some hundreds of years
before the Incarnation of the Word, the necessary preparations be
completed in Greece 4 on the side of Reason, as in Israel 5 on the
side of Prophecy?

Here is a useful place to pause for a moment and consider that
astonishing period of human history from the beginning of the sixth
century until the close of the fifth century b.c. One would say that
in the major cultural areas of the world the human spirit was then
going through its crisis of adolescence, and made choices that were to
be decisive for the future.

With the Buddha , 6 the Orient decisively confirmed the choice it
had made long since for the great "bound" wisdoms in which reason,
a captive of sacred traditions, remained united to the nocturnal or twi-
light world of myths (and of magic). At this price, it entered into
certain secrets hidden in the recesses of the universe and of the human
being, it went deeply into the ways of natural mystique, and attained
a lofty peace .of purely human self-possession (at least among those

4 Heraclitus, 576-480; Socrates, 470-399. He was dead when the fourth century
began; Plato, 427-348; Aristotle, 384-322.

5 Jeremiah, toward the beginning of the sixth century; the second Isaiah and
the Canticle of Canticles, end of the sixth century; Job, Ecclesiastes, fifth century;
building of the second Temple, 520-515 b.c.

6 Buddha, 563-483; Lao-tse, toward the beginning of the sixth century; Con-
fucius, 551-479. (If I speak here of “the Orient” in general, it is because of the
fact that Buddhism, bom in India, passed over into China.)

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

»7

who had the good fortune to complete the way of initiation). But
these great wisdoms received so many riches from the world of dreams
that reason was unwilling to emerge completely from the night. The
proper domain of metaphysics, that of religion and its rites, that of the
spiritual life (even the realm of “powers,” even when one claimed not
to seek them) remained undifferentiated; God and the world were
mingled with each other because in such kinds of wisdom God was
transcendent only oh condition that the world was illusory, and by the
same token God was no longer transcendent. The human mind lived
under the sway of the indefinite . 7 Its relation to extra-mental being
remained ambiguous, since the latter was ultimately illusory when it
was a case of things, and inseparable from the human Self when it was
a case of the divine Self. The possibility of a wisdom which should at
the same time be a purely rational knowledge remained totally un-
recognized.

At about the same period, Greece, by contrast, opted for a free
wisdom, in which reason, passing to the “solar” 8 state, decided to risk
everything by breaking once and for all with its centuries-old subjec-
tion to the twilight world of myths. (These latter would doubtlessly
continue to haunt the temples and the mystery cults, but adult
thought would no longer believe in them.)

At the beginning, things had almost gone askew, with the intellec-
tual intoxication of the sophists, and their reason dedicated solely to
Verisimilitude. But Socrates saved at once reason, the future of cul-
ture and the rights of Truth. He died for it, not on the cross, as the
Word who became man in Israel did, but by taking hemlock, and
repaying his debt to Aesculapius, like a good Athenian pagan.

A supreme Wisdom of reason, a Wisdom which was also Scientia or
Knowledge, Metaphysics was founded; and Physics, a science of the
observable world— which, confusing the philosophy of nature with
the science of phenomena, believed itself in respect to phenomena
(to its unhappiness as well as ours) in continuity with metaphysics.
The distinction between theoretical knowledge and practical knowl-
edge wa* recognized, like that between metaphysics and religion.

T Cf. Louis Gardet, 4, L’<rffToniement de $ humanismes ” Nova et Vetera,
Octobcr-Dccember 1954, pp. 242-242.

8 Cf. our study “Sign* et Sytnbole in Quatre Essais sur Vesprit dans sa condi-
tion charndU, Paris, Dcscl6e Dc Brouwer, 1939; 2nd cd., Paris, Alsatia, 1956,
pp. 80-106.

i8

JACQUES M ARITAIN

Reason also came to recognize the existence of a God distinct from
the world, but whose transcendence was ignored and who was only
the First among the gods. The great error of Greek reason (for which
the supernatural Wisdom of Israel, with its infinite and infinitely per-
fect God, providentially compensated) was to confuse Finitude and
Perfection, and to pretend to make the spirit live under the rule of
the finite . 9

On the other hand, and here especially Socrates, saved the future
of culture, Greek reason was able to become aware of that glory of
the mind which is Knowing, and of the authentic relation between
the mind and the extra-mental being of things. In an impulse arrested
too soon, and for a fleeting, unforgettable moment, it had the sense
of being; it was able to see that the human intellect, in identifying
itself immaterially, intentionaliter , with the being of things, truly
reaches that which exists outside our minds, beginning with the world
of matter to which, through our senses, we are naturally adapted.

☆

The great adventure into which the choice made by Greece
launched the world marked a decisive step forward. From the begin-
ning, doubtlessly, it also entailed losses: in Hellenic and Hellenistic
thought itself it was accompanied by grave shortcomings, which the
Christian centuries have remedied in the light of the revelation re-
ceived in Israel. No doubt Western culture, which has its point of
departure in this adventure, has experienced in the last four centuries
more and more grave crises in the intellectual order— with Descartes,
Kant, Hegel, and finally with those who today propose to place us
under the sway of Phenomena. The fact remains that in the com-
monplace assertions (irritating like all commonplaces) of the Greek
miracle , there is a fundamental truth which we have a duty to recog-
nize.

At the same time, to return to the pre-philosophy of common sense
discussed previously, we must equally recognize that even if, as I have
said, it is a gift of nature, it depends not only on nature, but on cul-
ture as well. In other words (and nothing is more in keeping with our
nature, which itself demands the developments of culture), this pre-
philosophy is a gift of nature received through the instrumentality of

9 Cf. Louis Gardet, op. cit.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

*9

culture, and in harmony with the characteristics of the great stages of
culture. This means that the pre-philosophy which is (or was— -I have
noted that it is in the process of disintegration) a gift of nature for
the man of our Western culture, is the result of a two-fold privilege
which this culture has enjoyed (and more or less squandered). On
the one hand, it has been animated and exalted by the Judeo-Chris-
tian tradition (a privilege supernatural in its origin: the divine revela-
tion), while on the*othef (arid it is this privilege which I am now
discussing), it was born of the "Greek miracle/’ which was no miracle
at all, but a normal awakening of the natura rationalis to itself, the
great awakening due to the passage, fully and decidedly consented to,
of the human mind under the "solar” regime of the Logos . 10

However annoying it may be for the egalitarian vocabulary which a
certain diplomatic courtesy (quite fatiguing in the long run) would
have us use, there is no way of ignoring that the development of
humanity and of culture implies, as a matter of course, a scale of
values. Each age, yes, even the most primitive, has its worth, to which
it is imperative to render justice. And if the age which follows is a
superior one, in reaching it man sustains certain losses. But the gains
are greater. That there is a scale of values is implied by the very no-
tion of progress. There are ages more or less fortunate, more or less
privileged. There are civilizations, human groups, and individual men,
who for a given work in a given connection, are the object of a certain
election— I am speaking of a natural election (or of the chosen ones of
History, as one would say today). Christians who are nurtured on the
idea of an election of grace (the chosen people, Abraham, Moses,
John the Baptist, the Virgin Mary, and all the saints of heaven) would
be misguided indeed if, because of their own good nature and their
desire to be kind to everyone, they were scandalized by the idea of
such a natural election or vocation, for God is the God of nature, too,
and every artist chooses to his liking in order to create and perfect his
work.

I apologize for using so many words. I was only wanting to justify
my assertion that, just as Western culture really is (or was) a privi-
leged culture, so the pre-philosophy of common sense proper to the
man of that culture is (or was) a privileged pre-philosophy, in which
the notions of common sense (actually common to all men) have

10 Cf. Quatre ettau sur tnpril, op. cit.

20 JACQUES M ARITAIN

(or had) reached a point of remarkably superior elaboration. This is
what is disappearing before our eyes.

I will note in closing that in taking their place in that “modem
civilization” to which the entire world, whether we like it or not, is
today invited, the peoples whose civilizations were developed under
the great initiatory wisdoms of the East, maintain, deep in their
hearts, a tenderness and veneration for these great wisdoms (and may
they preserve and transmit to us many truths which deserve immor-
tality ), 11 but do not seem to endeavor to rejuvenate and reinvigorate
them; they know that such wisdoms belong to a past which they are
leaving behind.

They are passing into the technocratic age and into Western culture
at the very instant, alas, when the latter seems to be degenerating;
they bring their tribute to the Greek achievement of liberating adult
reason at the very moment when this achievement is in jeopardy. And
so we see them exposed to incalculable losses out of necessity but for
a questionable gain. In entering modem civilization they leave the
cultural regime of their own former wisdoms, but the world they are
entering is itself turning away from the lofty rational (and supra -
rational) wisdom to which it was called. It can no longer offer them
either theological rationally elaborated wisdom (which its culture
claims it can do without), or metaphysical rational wisdom, or phi-
losophy worthy of the name (its philosophers, to distract it from its
labors, make it hear the plaintive ballade of a being which is not being
and a knowledge which is not knowledge). What such a world can
offer is the magnificent ersatz of the science of Phenomena, and along
with it, power over matter; a dream of complete domination of all
visible things (even of the invisible) and also the abdication of the
human mind, renouncing Truth for Verification, Reality for Sign.

One would hope that the new arrivals who flock from the ends of
the earth to take their part in the progress of modern civilization
would bring us— but nothing is more doubtful, except perhaps for
some of them who might turn to the Christian faith and the rational
wisdoms it has nourished— help and assistance against the powerful
Disgust with Reason, the joyous (no, it is not joyous) logophobia
which is festering before our eyes.

11 Cf. Louis Gardet, “Interpenetration des cultures,” Nova et Vetera, October-
December, 1956, p. 282.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

21

Contemporary Trends,

Especially the Trends of “Left” and “Right”

AT THE TIME OF THE “LETTER ON INDEPENDENCE”

* » 4 T "

Ecumenism, it appears, asks us not only to be “open” to our fellow
men, to their anguish, their problems, their need for recognition, but
also to all contemporary trends. That is more difficult, for there is a
little of everything in these trends, sometimes euphemistically re-
ferred to as “currents of thought.” For example, the neo-modernism
which I have already spoken about is one of our most active contem-
porary currents. Besides, these trends are sometimes— what a pity! —
directly opposed to one another (nature and history want it that
way), like the so-called “left” and “right” trends which I particularly
wish to consider in this second note.

Long ago, I wrote a short book 12 in which I spoke of the mysteri-
ous cleavage indicated by these terms, which refer not only to parlia-
mentary benches, but to all the citizens. I drew there a distinction
between two senses of the words “right” and “left,” a physiological
sense and a political sense. In the first sense one is of the “right” or of
the “left” by a disposition of temperament, just as the human being
is bom bilious or sanguine. It is useless, in that meaning of the term,
to pretend to be neither right nor left. All one can do is to correct
one's temperament and bring it to an equilibrium which more or less
approaches the point where the two tendencies converge. For at the
extreme lower limit of these tendencies, a kind of monstrosity unfolds
before the mind— on the right a pure cynicism, on the left a pure
unrealism (or idealism, in the metaphysical sense of this word).
The pure man of the left detests being, always preferring, in principle,
in the words of Rousseau , 13 what is not to what is. The pure man of
the right detests justice and charity, always preferring, in principle, in
the words of Goethe (himself an enigma who masked his right with

13 Lrttre tar I'lndSpendanct (Paris: Dcscl6e De Brouwer, 1935). Cf. Henry
Bars, La Politique mlon Jacques Maritain (Paris: Editions Ouvri6rcs, 1961).

18 “What is not is the only tiling that is beautiful/’ said Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
And Jcan-Paul Sartre: “The real is never beautiful.”

22

JACQUES MARITAIN

his left), injustice to disorder. Nietzsche is a noble and a beautiful
example of the man of the right, and Tolstoy, of the man of the left.

In the second sense, the political sense, left and right designate
ideals, energies, and historic formations into which the men of these
two opposing temperaments are normally drawn to group themselves.
Here again, considering the circumstances in which a given country
finds itself at a given moment, it is impossible for anyone who takes
political realities seriously not to orient himself either to the right or
to the left. Yet things get so confused in this matter that men of the
right sometimes practice a politics of the left, and vice versa. I think
Lenin is a good example of the first case. There are no more dreadful
revolutions than revolutions of the left carried out by men of rightist
temperament. There are no weaker governments than governments
of the right run by leftist temperaments (Louis XVI) .

But things look completely spoiled when, at certain moments of
deep trouble, the political formations of right and left, instead of
being each a more or less high-spirited team held in check by a more
or less firm political reason, have become nothing more than exasper-
ated affective complexes carried away by their myth-ideal; from that
point on, political intelligence can do nothing but practice ruses in the
service of passion. Under those conditions, to be neither right nor left
means simply that one intends to keep his sanity . 14

This is what I tried my best to do, at a time when things were al-
ready quite spoiled (“I am neither left nor right /' 15 even though by
temperament I am what people call a man of the left). By keeping
one's sanity I did not mean taking refuge in some kind of neutrality,
but preparing the way for a political activity that would be “authenti-
cally and vitally Christian." In other words I had in mind a politics
which, while drawing its inspiration from the Christian spirit and
Christian principles, would involve only the initiative and responsi-
bility of the citizens who conduct it, without being in the slightest
degree a politics dictated by the Church or committing her to respon-
sibility. May I add that until today— and despite (or because of) the
entry on the scene, in different countries, of political parties labeled
“Christian" (most of which are primarily combinations of electoral
interests) — the hope for the advent of a Christian politics (corres-

14 Lettre $ur Vlndtpendance , pp. 42-43, 4 3—44.

15 Ibid.y p. 9.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 3

ponding in the practical order to what a Christian philosophy is in the
speculative order) has been completely frustrated. I know only one
example of an authentic “Christian revolution/' and that is what
President Eduardo Frei is attempting at this very moment in Chile,
and it is not sure that he will succeed. (It is also true that among
those of my contemporaries still living as I write these lines, I see in
the Western world no more than three revolutionaries worthy of the
name— Eduardo Frei in phik* Saul Alinsky 18 in America, . . . and
myself in France, who am not worth beans, since my call as a
philosopher has obliterated my possibilities as an agitator. . . .)

But let us leave this digression. Possibly it will be of some use to
repeat here what I said in that distant epoch:

“The whole question here comes down to knowing if one believes
that an authentically and vitally Christian politics can arise in history
and is now invisibly being prepared. It comes down to knowing if
Christianity should incarnate itself to that extent, if the temporal
mission of the Christian should go that far, if the witness of love
should descend that far; or whether we must abandon the world to
the devil in that which is most natural to it— civic or political life. If
we believe in the possibility of an authentically and vitally Christian
politics, then our most urgent temporal duty is to work for its estab-
lishment.

. . A healthy Christian politics (that is a politics of Christian
inspiration, but one which calls to itself all non-Christians who find it
just and humane) would undoubtedly seem to go pretty far to the left
as regards certain technical solutions, in its appreciation of the con-
crete movement of history, and in its demands for the transformation
of the present economic regime. In reality, however, it would have
absolutely original positions, proceeding, in the spiritual and moral
order, from very different principles than the conceptions of the
world, life, the family, and the city, which prevail in the various
parties of the left.

“. . . Just as, in the spiritual order, which is supra-political, the
liberty of the Christian requires that he be all things to all men, and

1€ Saul Alinsky, who is a great friend of mine, is a courageous and admirably
staunch organizer of “people's communities" and an anti-racist leader whose
methods are is effective a* they are unorthodox. Cf. “The Professional Radical,
Conversations with Saul Alina ky," Harper's Magazine , June, July, 1965.

2 4

JACQUES MARITAIN

carry his testimony to all comers, fostering everywhere those bonds
of friendship, fraternal kindness, natural virtues of fidelity, devotion,
and gentleness, without which we cannot really help each other, and
without which supernatural charity, or what we take for it, is in danger
of freezing, or of turning into clannish proselytism— to that same
extent, in the political order itself, our chief concern in the absence
of an appropriate vehicle for a vitally Christian politics, should be
to protect the inner germ of such a politics against everything that
would risk altering it.

“The more this germ remains fragile, hidden, and contested, the
more intransigence and firmness are required to keep it pure. . . .
From now on, in the most barren conditions, and with the awkward-
ness of first beginnings, the signal has been given. Even though the
invisible flame of the temporal mission of the Christian, of that
Christian politics which the world has not yet known, should burn
in some few hearts only, because the wood outside is too green, still
the witness borne in this way would at least be maintained, the flame
handed on. And amid the increasing horror of a world where justice,
force, liberty, order, revolution, war, peace, work, and poverty have
all been dishonored, where politics does its job only by corrupting the
souls of the multitude with lies and by making them accomplices in
the crimes of history, where the dignity of the human person is end-
lessly flouted, the defense of this dignity and of justice, and the
political primacy of those human and moral values which make up
the core of our earthly common good, would continue to be affirmed,
and a small ray of hope would continue to glimmer for mankind in a
rehabilitation of love in the temporal order. The principle of the
lesser evil is often, and rightly, invoked in politics. There is no greater
evil in this field than to leave justice and charity without witness
within the temporal order itself, and in regard to the temporal
good.” 17

TODAY

It has been thirty years since this Lettre sur V Independence was
written. Since then our confusion of mind, when it comes to 'Tight”

17 Op. cit., pp. 45-53*

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

25

and “left,” has only increased. In France, rightist extremism has been
invaded by cruel frustrations and bitter resentments, owing as much
to a nostalgic memory of the old Marshal as to the disappointments
of the Algerian War, not to mention the unhealthy feeling of belong-
ing to the vanquished who are seeking some kind of revenge. Leftist
extremism has been invaded by a fever of demagogic excess and ag-
gressive conformism, which protect themselves poorly against the
great amount of illusion and the bit of meanness that gregarian
Idealism carries inevitably with it— not to mention the unhealthy
feeling that one belongs to the victors and everyone should be made
to know it.

None of this is very encouraging or enlightening. But the most
serious thing is that the words “right” and “left” no longer have
merely a political and social meaning; they have taken on above all —
at least in the Christian world— a religious sense, resulting in the worst
kind of jumble. How do we even find names for sociological forma-
tions which catch our attention first of all because of a certain reli-
gious attitude, but whose staunch background is a certain politico-
social attitude, as if, by declaring a given religious position, one was
necessarily announcing in the same breath a particular political posi-
tion, and vice versa? Words such as “integralist” and “modernist”
could not be employed, for they refer to religious behavior only. Nor
could “conservative” and “progressive,” since they refer only to polit-
ico-social behavior. We can get out of such a fix, if we try' to designate
these two vast trends, whose intelligibility is so feebly established and
includes such a confusion of aspects, only be constructing a kind of
Ajrchtype to which we will give an allegorical or mythical name (here
is a good case for this word). This will have the advantage of offend-
ing nobody: consequently, as the prudent authors of certain mystery
stories warn us, any resemblance to any person living or dead should
be considered purely coincidental, and no one should feel he has
been alluded to. To designate the Archtype of leftist extremism, then
I will speak of the Sheep of Pannrge; and for the Archtype of rightist
extremism, I will say the Ruminators of the Holy Alliance . 18

Of course when it comes to real persons who seem to enter in any
degree (there are an infinite number of degrees) into more or less
close participation with either of these Archtypes, I hope I have for

18 Sheep abo ruminate, I know, but over dreams of the future.

2 6

JACQUES MARITAIN

them the feelings that are appropriate between Christians (and even
between simple human persons) and not merely the kind of charity
one would have for a criminal or a dunce. I am quite ready to evince
my esteem and brotherly respect for them, and I would be sincerely
happy to unite my prayers to theirs, and to go with them to receive
the Body of the Lord. All the same, if I happen to find myself in
agreement on some point, either philosophical-theological, or politi-
co-social, with either the Sheep of Panurge or the Ruminators of the
Holy Alliance, I feel a serious uneasiness. And I don’t know which
I detest more: to see a truth that is dear to me disregarded and
abused by one party or the other, or to see it invoked and betrayed, by
the one or the other.

Such accidents are nevertheless inevitable. And we should note
here the unhappy interlacing of values which causes the Sheep to
cut such a wretched figure in philosophical or theological matters (in
order to be 'with it” they are fideists, modernists, or anything you
please), while in political and social questions their instinct prompts
them to sound doctrine which they will more or less mess up. ld The
opposite is true of the big Ruminators. I keep myself as far as I can
from both camps, but it is quite natural (if hardly pleasing) that I
feel myself less distant from the first when it is a question of things
that are Caesar’s, and less distant from the second (alas!) when it is a
question of the things that are God’s.

We should recognize, moreover, that in its zeal neither camp gives
first place to the service of pure truth. It is, above all, the alarms of
Prudence that stir the Ruminators of the Holy Alliance: to bar the
way to threatening dangers, to lock the doors, to build dikes. What
stirs the Sheep of Panurge more than anything else is Deference to
public opinion: to do as everyone does, at least as all those who are
not fossils.

By and large, the two extremisms whose Archtypes have just
furnished me an excuse for some bad jokes, characterize but two
minorities, although for the moment the Sheep are clearly more
numerous than the big Ruminators, and can boast of a much vaster
influence, especially among clerical professors. The great bulk of the

19 “The Christian left in France has evangelical entrails, but the brain is weak
in theology.” Claude Trcsmontant, “Tdches de la pensde chr 6 tienne ,” Esprit , July-
August 1965, p. 120.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 7

Christian people seem indifferent to the efforts of both these minor-
ities. The people are troubled and unhappy because they feel that
something great is in the offing and they do not know how to partici-
pate. They are groping, and submissively lend themselves to attempts
of groupings which are often disappointing. They conform willingly
(not without nostalgia among some elderly lovers of beauty in the
Church) to the use of the vernacular in religious ceremonies, but
complain of the miserable translations which they are forced to recite,
as well as of the disorder (temporary, no doubt) which accompanies
liturgical innovations. They ask themselves at times whether their
religion has been changed, and they will not easily be satisfied for long
with vigil services, recordings, and cheap songs with which the initia-
tives of certain curates have adorned the "community celebrations/'
Above all, they suffer from a great and genuine thirst to which no
one seems to pay any heed, and their good will in accepting the substi-
tutes makes one foresee serious disillusionment.

It is the truth they are seeking (indeed, yes), and the living sources.
There is no shortage of guides, judging from the noise they make, and
surely all of them have the best intentions. No doubt a few of them
know the way. Let us hope that those who do can give us some
inkling of what it is "to accept as a child the kingdom of God," with-
out which, Jesus said, no one can enter it 20 — and it is certainly not a
question of closing our eyes, for a child looks . We must at all costs
know a little what it means to look at divine things with the eyes of a
child, and in what school this is taught— and that God alone can teach
us this.

January 18 , 1966

** “ Qujcuirume non acotperit re mum Dei tkui pu*r, non intrabit
(Luke 18:17)

in illud."

3 THE WORLD AND ITS
CONTRASTING ASPECTS

The religious or “mystical” truth
concerning the world
in its relation with the kingdom of God

I have often insisted (a long time ago in Freedom in the Modern
World , 1 and True Humanism , 2 more recently in On the Philoso-
phy of History 3 ) on the fundamental ambivalence of the world when
considered in its relation to the kingdom of God. I will begin this
chapter by looking at this ambivalence again.

To do this, it is enough to refer to the assertions of the Gospel.
These are essential assertions; if we forgot them, we would be mere
shadows of Christians; because they give us not only what Jesus knew,
but what he lived, in the very depths of his experience— what he
lived in his life, what he lived in his death.

All my readers are in the habit of reading the Gospel, I am sure. But
it is not a bad idea to bring together all the texts which have to do
with the world.

If we wish to try to understand these texts, let us not forget, that
Jesus and the apostles, when they speak to us of the world, consider it
always in its relation— its simultaneous twofold relation— to the
kingdom of God. On the one hand, insofar as the world accepts its
final destiny to be taken up and transfigured into another world , a
divine world, the kingdom of God which has already begun and will
endure eternally; on the other hand, insofar as the world rejects the

1 (N T ew York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936); Du Regime temporel et de la
liberte (Paris: Descl^e De Brouwer, 1933).

2 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938),' Humanisme Integral (Paris:
Aubier, 1936).

8 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957); Pout une Philosophic de
VHistoire (Paris: ed. du Seuil, 1959).

28

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE 29

kingdom and falls back upon itself. What is then at stake (for it has
to do with the mystery of salvation) is the religious or “mystical”
truth concerning the world.

I regret having to speak in a magisterial tone, which is not my man-
ner, but it is a question of the Gospel.

GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD

“God so loved the world that he gave it his only Son.” 4

How could God not love the world which he himself made? He
made it out of love. And see how it ruins itself, this world, with all its
beauty, by reason of the freedom of the creature who is the image of
God and who prefers himself to God and chooses nothingness. “That
is why, when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘You have not
wanted either sacrifice or oblation, but you have prepared a body for
me. . . / Then I said: T am coming to do your will, O God/ ” 5 *

“For I did not come to condemn the world, but to save the
world.” e

“God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but
for the world to be saved by him.” 7

“Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” 8 9

He who never knew sin, he consented to be made sin 9 and to die
on the cross, in order to deliver the world from sin.

And at the very moment when this world, insofar as it refuses the
kingdom, is judged— “now is the judgment of the world,” 10 (it itself
judges itself) — at the moment when Jesus is going to be lifted up on
the cross and to draw all things to him ; 11 on the very eve of his
condemnation by the world and of his going to his Father , 12 and
leaving his own who were in the world and whom he loved until the

4 John 3:16.

ztiebr. 10:5-7.

* John 12:47.

7 John 3:17.

* John 1 129.

9 2 Cor. 5:21.

10 John 12:31.

11 John 12:32.

u Joha 14:28.

30 JACQUES M ARITAIN

end , 13 at the Last Supper, at that moment when — whereas he does
not pray for the world (it is for the Church that he prays, “for those
whom you have given me” 14 and “for those who will believe in me
through their word” 15 ) he asks “that they may all be one, even as
you, Father, in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us” 16 —
he adds, “so that the world will believe that you sent me.” 17 How
extraordinarily important the world is! Surely, since he came to save
it.

That world which did not know the Father , 18 what I do, Christ
said, is in order that “it know that I love the Father and that I do as
the Father has commanded me ”; 19 it is necessary “that the world
know that you have sent me and that you have loved them 29 as you
have loved me.” 21

The world must know this, so that the world itself, or at least all
in it who will not refuse to be saved, may be saved and enter into the
kingdom of God and be transfigured there. And the world must also
know this for its own condemnation, or at least for the condemna-
tion of all in it that refuses to be saved and to turn toward mercy.

“The Son of man came to seek, and to save what was perishing.” 22
But he does not save us in spite of ourselves. He does not save what
was perishing if what was perishing prefers to perish.

Behind all this there is a very long history.

The world was created good (which does not mean that it was
created divine). It was created good, its natural structures are good
in themselves: the Bible intends to get this into our heads once and
for all. “God (Elohim) saw that the light was good.” 23 And in the
same way, at the succeeding stages of creation, “God saw that it was

18 John 13:1.

14 John 17:9.

15 John 17:20.

1(5 John 17:21.

17 Ibid.

18 John 17:25.

19 John 14:31.

20 “Those whom you have given me”; and “those who will believe in me
through their word.” John 17:9; 17:20.

21 John 17:23.

22 Lulce 19:10.

28 Gen. 1:4.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE 31

good" keeps returning like a refrain * 4 And on the sixth day, after man
had been created, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold,
it was very good."

And then evil made its appearance on the earth, with the
disobedience of Man and Woman, deceived by the Evil Spirit.
Finished, the earthly paradise, forever, for them and for all their
posterity. (There are authors today who are discovering that original
sin is an invention oFSk Aogustine; too bad they remember Genesis
so poorly. I know very well they wifi say it is a myth, but this “myth,”
whose truth is vouched for by God himself, comes at the head of the
Bible, a pretty kmg time before St. Augustine. 2 ®)

f4 G«». mo; 12; 18; 21; 25.

** Gen. 1:31.

54 It would be childish to believe that before passing under the regime of the
Logos, human thought was entirety given over to the illusions of the imagination.

Under what I called the twilight regime (cf. p. 16), not only did practical
thought have a hold — in a way different from but as good as oar own— on the
realities of daily life, the making and use of took, etc., but in the metapfeysico-
religioos domain the toms, still wholly immersed ra the concrete and swarming
with images, in which human thought then expressed itself could be adequate to
what is, although in an essentially veiled manner.

Yes, they were myths. But in our day this term has been made dangerously
equivocal, even with pegard to primitive thought. (This is because of the sys-
tematic and mistaken use which our phenomenologists make of it in regard to
everything which, in our own thought, does not pertain to scientific observation
or psychological experience.) The myths of primitive thought were not all without
value as wisdom, a more profound wisdom, I readily believe, than some of our
metaphysical systems. There were myths which were not fairy tales, myths which
were true, that k, myths that spoke the truth (Just as under the regime of the
Logos there are “fa, be” and “true” propositions). Even in the domain of “science,'*
one can *ay that the network of lines which Chinese acupuncture imagines as
connecting together all parts of the human body k a practical “myth” which
teaches us nothing about anatomical structures but is “true” when it comes to
where it is proper to insert the needle.

1 have been aware of these things for a long time — without nevertheless being
ui agreement, far from it, with the problematic and the generalizations ( incurably
equivocal whatever he can do) of an author like Jean -Marie Paupert, whose good
will deserves respect and sympathy but whose views on theology, as exemplified in
hi* recent book, Peut- cm Hit chretmn aufoimfhui, seem to me to be rather
confuted.

Fpoui the viewpoint I have just indicated concerning the two great historical
regimes of human thooeht, it appears that (a unique oase in the Bible, because
rcvehticre has here used dements coming down from the earliest times and re-
asiToncd m a ptopbetic Hght focused on the past) the history of Adam and Eve
is a trodi, a sacral truth veiled m its mode of expression, which hands over to tis
what * most important, absolutely important for us to know about our origins: the

3 2

JACQUES MAR I T A I N

Henceforth evil is in the world, this world whose ontological struc-
tures are and remain good— we know that malum est in bono sicut in
subjecto 27 — and which, however wounded, continues (not without
losses) its movement toward the temporal goals to which its nature
tends and for whose realization we have a duty to co-operate. Evil is
in the world, and ferments there everywhere, sows deception every-
where, separating man from God. And while history advances and ages
of civilization succeed one another, the true God remains unknown or
badly known — except for one small nation, a chosen Vine sprung from
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And men would be lost to eternal life if
all who do not flee from a grace whose name they do not know were
not saved by the Blood of Christ to come. And when he comes, the
spiritual Power, the Doctors and Priests of the chosen people, crying
out that they have no other king but Caesar, will condemn as a blas-
phemer the One who is the Truth in person. And they will deliver
him up to an earthly Power for which truth is only a word; and acting
in concert, spiritual Power gone astray and earthly Power will put him
to death. That is the other face of the world in its relation to the
kingdom of God.

THE WORLD HATES ME

“The world cannot hate you (who do not believe in me); but me,”
Jesus said, “it hates me because I testify of it that its works are
evil .” 28 As for the disciples, the world will treat them as it treated
their master: "You will be hated by all for my name's sake." 29 In his
last farewell, Jesus will again repeat to them: “If the world hates you r

Event (the fall) which, as a result of a free act, a sin of Man and Woman placed
at their creation in a supernatural state of innocence or harmony with God,
brought mankind to pass into a state of rupture with God — which nature of itself
is incapable of retrieving — whereby each man is bom deprived of grace. Here,
expressed in the language appropriate to the regime of the Logos, is the truth
which the Church, faithful to the revelation with which she has been entrusted,
and in the prophetic light of which I have just spoken, discerns in the so-called
“myth” (but true under veils) of the mysterious forbidden fruit which Man, at
the instigation of Woman, has eaten.

27 Sum. theol , I, 48, 3.

28 John 7:7.

29 Matt. 10:22.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

33

know that it has hated me before it hated you. If yon were of the
world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the
world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates
you. Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater
than his master/ If they persecuted me , they will persecute you
too." *•

And similarly, at the Last Supper, in his prayer for them: 'The
world has hated thfcm because they are not of the world, even as I am
not of the world. I do not pray that you should keep them out of the
world, but that you should keep them from the Evil One. They are
not of the world , even as I am not of the world /' 31 And again, at the
Last Supper, he announces that the Paraclete, "when he will come,
will bring accusation against the world by reason of the sin and of the
justice and of the judgment." By reason of the sin, because of the un-
belief of the world ("because they do not believe in me"); by reason
of the justice, because the world has rejected the Just One ("I go to
the Father, and you will see me no more"); by reason of the judg-
ment, "because the prince of this world is already judged." 32

It is Jesus who calls by this name the Angel of Darkness; "I will no
longer talk much with you, for the prince of this world is coming,,
venit princeps hujus mundi ." 33 On Palm Sunday, when he was
foretelling his Passion, and a voice from heaven was heard, "Now," he
bad said, "is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this
world be cast out," 34 — in other terms, is going to be dispossessed:
dispossessed prince, and that much more anxious for his revenge,
he will continue to prowl about us "like a roaring lion, seeking some-
one to devour ," 38 as the liturgy describes him to us every evening in
the lectio brevis of Compline. He will continue to infest innocent
material creatures 3 * on whose behalf the Church lavishes her exor-
cisms— and to try to make in the heads of intellectuals the nicest pos-
sible mess— be will continue until the Passion has borne all its fruits.

** John 15:18-20.

51 John 17:14-16.

12 ohn 16:8-11.

M John 14:20.

** John 12:31.

** I Pet*r 5:8.

16 “He infests innocent fotratains, bilk, woods, he lurks in the tempest/’ Riissa
Maritain, Ia Prtnc* dc ce monde (2nd ed. Paris: Descl6e Dc Brouwer, 1963),
pp. 12-13.

34

JACQUES MARITAIN

until the end of the world: he will let loose the world only when the
world is ended. 87 (Good lord, I know very well that to a perspectivist
the devil is a mythical survival, but I for one believe in him.) This is
why St. Paul (something of a backward thinker himself), in warning
us that it is not flesh and blood that we have to contend with, but
evil spirits, calls them “the world despots of this present darkness/"

TOVS X oor f JLO XP aTO P aiS T0V &XOTOVS TOVTOV. °

Thus, the world appears as the Antagonist, from which the great
refusal comes. “The world was made by him, and the world did not
know him. He came to his own home and his own people did not
receive him” 39

The world lies in the power of evil: “the whole world is in the
power of the Evil One ."" 40 “Woe to the world, because of the scan-
dals/" 41 “The world cannot receive the Spirit of truth . . . because
it neither sees him nor knows him."" 42

And the world will be condemned. St. Paul asks the Corinthians
to examine themselves “so that we may not be condemned along with
the world” 43 And Christ has vanquished the world. “In the world
you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have vanquished the
world.” 44

Like Christ, the Church is of God, not of the world. And we have
to choose to be friends of the world or friends of God. Because the
world is not only created nature as God made it, but this very nature
insofar as crowned with the triple diadem of the evil desires of human
Liberty— Pride at being supremely self-sufficient; Intoxication with
knowledge, not for the sake of truth but for power and possession;
Intoxication in being overcome and tom by pleasure. “Do not love
the world or the things in the world."" 45 “If anyone loves the world,
the love (dy airq) of the Father is not in him. For all that seduces

37 Sum. theol. y I, 64, 4.

33 Eph. 6:12.

39 John 10:11.

40 John 5:19.

41 Matt. 18:7.

42 John 14:17.

43 1 Cor. 11:32.

44 John 16:33.

45 “jxr) 8 e ra lv r<? Koatuo” A formula too abbreviated to be translated literally.
"‘Nor what is in the world” forces the sense, by centering the thought on a word
which is not in the Greek text

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

35

in the world 46 — the Lust of the flesh, the Lust of the eyes, nnd the
Pride of life— is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world
will pass away, and the lust of it.” 47

“Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world is
enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the
world makes himself an enemy of God.” 48

Adulterers, you say we are? Ah, that's pretty rude indeed. James
and John, you poor backward apostles, what kind of a story have you
got there? Calling us such a name, we who are emerging at last from
all the old complexes, and who are taught by our new doctors, with
sacred fervor, that there is nothing more beautiful or more urgent
than to be friends of the world, this beloved world that is evolving so
superbly toward final Deliverance, thanks to the Christian removal of
the cross? Or could there have been a peculiar misunderstanding
somewhere? What is called the “post-conciliar situation” of the
Catholic faithful (better to say the situation following upon the
crisis, still acute, which made the restatements of the Council neces-
sary) is certainly a curious thing.

1430092

SOME CONCLUSIONS

For the moment, I would simply like to stick to the gist of all the
New Testament texts I have been citing. As I said in True Humanism
(well, I did meditate on the matter for a long time), the world is the
domain at once of man, of God, and of the devil. Thus appears the
essential ambiguity of the world and of its history; it is a field corn-
own to the three. The world is a closed field which belongs to God
by right of creation; to the devil by right of conquest, because of sin;
to Christ by right of victory over the conqueror, because of the Pas-
sion. The task of the Christian in the world is to contend with the
devil his domain, to wrest it from him; he must strive to this end, he
will succeed in it only in part as long as time will endure. The world is

4 ® ‘Srav to & t» icoafjuj)” What was said in the preceding note applies equally
here.

47 I fohn 2:15-17.

4 & farms 4.4

36 JACQUES MARITAIN

saved, yes, it is delivered in hope, it is on the march toward the king-
dom of God definitely revealed; but it is not holy , it is the Church
which is holy; it is on the march toward the kingdom of God, and
this is why it is a treason toward this kingdom not to seek with all
one’s forces— in a manner adapted to the conditions of earthly history,
but as effective as possible, quantum potes , tantum aude—a realiza-
tion or, more exactly, a refraction in the world of the Gospel exigen-
cies; nevertheless this realization, even though relative, will always be
in one manner or another deficient and disputed in the world. And at
the same time that the history of the world is on the march— it is the
growth of the wheat— toward the kingdom of God, it is also on
the march— it is the growth of the tares, inextricably mingled with the
wheat— toward the kingdom of reprobation.

The Gospel texts we have called to mind amount to saying that the
world is sanctified insofar as it is not only the world but is assumed
into the universe of the Incarnation; and that it is reprobate insofar
as it shuts itself up in itself, insofar, in the words of Claudel, as it
shuts itself up in the essential difference, and as it remains only the
world, separated from the universe of the Incarnation.

Whereas the history of the Church, which is, as Pascal says, the his-
tory of the truth, leads as such toward the kingdom of God defini-
tively revealed and has no other end than that kingdom— on the
contrary, divided between two opposing ultimate ends, the history of
the temporal city leads at one and the same time toward the kingdom
of perdition and toward the kingdom of God 49 — as toward the terms
that are beyond its own natural ends.

I am not forgetting that the world has a relatively final end, which
is its natural end. This natural end is not a goal attained once and for
all; in the language of Leibniz , 50 it is an unending path through con-
quests, and which has no term, and over whose entire length mankind
is laboring to overcome fatality and reveal itself to itself. Nor do I for-
get that in the natural order the world has an opposite “end” (in the
sense of a final occurrence)— namely the losses and waste resulting
from|he growth of evil (not as great, in the last analysis, but a pretty

49 From a new translation by Joseph Evans of True Humanism, still in manu-
script (French ed., pp. 114-116).

50 He said of beatitude, "it is a path through pleasures/'

THE PEA'SANT OF THE GARONNE

37

nuisance for all that) in the course of history. There we have— in a
purely philosophical perspective— a sort of historical hell (a faint
image of the real hell) from which the world and the history of the
world can only be delivered if this world , regenerated from top to
bottom, finds itself changed into a totally new universe: the new
heaven and the new earth of Christian eschatology, according to
which the absolutely ^Inal end of history is beyond history. In other
words, there will be a discontinuity between history, which exists in
time, and the final state of humanity, which will take place in a trans-
figured world.

But let us leave this parenthesis. As I indicated at the beginning of
this chapter, the Gospel does not consider the world merely in itself,
in its natural structures and its historical development, its various
political, economic or social regimes, its ages of culture, or with re-
spect to the natural end which I have just mentioned. The Gospel
considers the world in its concrete and existential connections with
the kingdom of God, already present in our midst. This kingdom is
the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, at once visible in those who
bear the mark of Christ and invisible in those who, without bearing
the mark of Christ, share in his grace— but it will be definitively
revealed only after the resurrection of the flesh. The world cannot be
neutral with respect to the kingdom of God. Either it is vivified by it,
or it struggles against it. If God so loved the w r orld that he gave it his
only begotten Son, it was to plant 51 and foster in it another world
where all the desires of nature would be finally more than fulfilled. If
Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save it, if the Lamb of
God takes away the sins of the world, this means that the kingdom of
God, which is not of the world, is itself growing in the world, and that
the life of grace performs in it its mysterious work; in such a way that
at the final end, when the world is manifestly and definitively saved, it
will no longer be this world y but will, at a stroke, have been trans-
muted into the other world , the universe of the Incarnation, which
shall have reached its state of complete accomplishment; the unim-
aginable world of glory that has existed from the beginning for the
holy Angels and the souls of the blessed, and where the bodies of

51 From the moment of Adam's repentance — in anticipation of the merits of
Christ.

38 JACQUES MARITAIN

Jesus and Mary are already present; and where, having been brought
to participate in the condition of spirit, its privileges and its freedom,
matter will be gentle and more fertile in beauty, the senses more
penetrating and awed than ever.

The “Ontosophic ” 52 Truth

CONCERNING THE WORLD
CONSIDERED IN ITS NATURAL STRUCTURES

The Gospel has a deep respect for created things, it loves the
beauty of the lilies of the field that are clothed more gloriously than
King Solomon , 53 and the birds of the air that have no granaries and
are fed by the Father , 64 and the little sparrows that are worth no-
thing, not one of which falls to the ground without God’s having per-
mitted it . 55 It understands how dearly a man values every sheep of
his flock , 56 and is alive to all that charms the heart in a child’s glance.
In the Gospel you cannot find the slightest trace of contempt for
anything created. Manicheism is an offense against the Father; the
logic of gnostic sects impregnated with this spirit demands that, all
things considered, God the Creator be regarded as an evil God. The
Catholic faith has always had a honor of them, in its view that
Catharians are the worst of blasphemers. They blaspheme God, for-
getting that the work of the six days was good and very good. And
they blaspheme reason, too.

The man whom St. Thomas called “the Philosopher”— that deplor-
able Westerner who came to us from the Near East by way of Mai-
monides and the Arabs— Aristotle knew that all that is, is good in the
very degree in which it is, and that being and good are convertible

52 I would like to apologize for this neologism. I had to use it for two reasons.
On the one hand, the truth it refers to is both philosophical and theological ; on
the other, this truth is not merely ontological , it is concerned with the moral
domain as well, since the essential inclinations of nature and its proper ends are
good not only in an ontological sense, but equally in an ethical or moral sense.

58 Matt. 6:29.

64 Matt. 6:26.

55 Luke 12:6.

58 Luke 15:6.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

39

terms, ens et bonum convertuntur : nothing stronger could be said.
Hence St. Thomas's statement: to exist is the act par excellence. Evil
is a “privation"— the absence of a good that should be there— evil is
not a being. It is true that life on earth inevitably involves suffering, as
a result of our fleshly condition, and also as a price paid to proceed to
loftier degrees of being (or, more precisely, of life). But as to moral
evil, it originates in the free will (a most high privilege in itself) of
created spirits. Catholic theology has always held firmly to these prin-
ciples. Nature taken in itself is good and tends to ends that are good.
The same thing applies to the world— that is, in a very general sense,
to the whole of created things, and, in a more restricted sense, to the
material and visible universe; and, in the even more restricted sense
which concerns us here, to our human universe, the universe of man,
of culture and history in their development here below.

The “ontosophic” truth at stake when it is a question of the world
taken in itself, is that, in spite of the evil that is present in it— some-
times so great as to be intolerable not only to man's sensibility but
to his very mind— the good, all things considered, is there, much
greater, deeper and more fundamental. The world is good in its
structures and in its natural ends. As stagnant, even as regressive as
the world can seem at certain times and in certain places of the earth,
its historic development, seen in its entirety, advances toward better
and more elevated states. In spite of everything, we ought to have
confidence in the world because, if evil grows in it along with good
(and in what a way!— one would have to be one of the new Pharisees
intoxicated by the three “ cosmological ," not theological, virtues not
to see that) there is, nevertheless, in the world a greater growth of
good.

The Christian has (I will come back to it in a moment) a temporal
mission with respect to the world and human progress. When St.
James tells us not to be friends of the world, he is by no means turn-
ing us away from this temporal mission! This mission itself implies
that we are not friends of the world in the sense in which the apostle
understands this expression, since the temporal mission of the Chris-
tian is to be ready to give his life to instill in the world something of
this Gospd, this kingdom of God, and this Jesus whom the world
hates and whose spur it so badly needs. When St. John commands us
not to love either the world or the things of the world, he has no in-

4 o

JACQUES MARITAIN

tention of forbidding us to love everything good and worthy of love
in the world; it is friendship with the world insofar as it is the enemy
of the Gospel and of Jesus that he has in view. If all the Gospel texts
which I recalled earlier (in the section, “The World Hates Me”) put
us on guard against the world so urgently and severely and with such
unimpeachable authority, it is by no means insofar as the world and
its history pursue their natural ends, but insofar as the world, taken
in its relationship (only too real!— to forget it is to deny Jesus) of
enmity toward Jesus and the kingdom of God, is the great Antago-
nist from which the great refusal comes.

THE NATURAL END OF THE WORLD

I spoke just now of the natural end of the world. I would like to
clarify this briefly. The absolutely final end, the supreme end of the
world is supra-mundane and supra-temporal, it belongs to the super-
natural order. But the world has also a natural end ( relatively final, or
final in a given order) . This end, in my opinion, is three-fold.

In its first aspect, the natural end of the history of the world is
the mastery of nature by man, and the conquest of human autonomy.
One reads in Genesis , 67 “God blessed them, and God said to them:
'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; have do-
minion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over
every living thing that moves upon the earth/ ” These words imply
mastery of nature: subdue the earth , and they cover the loftiest am-
bitions of human science. Here we have something temporal and
earthly, and it is a goal, a genuine destination for the world. The
philosopher can express the same idea in other ways if he reflects on
the nature of man in his capacity as a reasoning agent immersed in
animality. He can s#y that this goal is the conquest which man must
achieve of his own autonomy; as an earthly being who harbors within
himself an immortal spirit he has a natural tendency to liberate him-
self progressively from the control exercised over him by the physical
world. At the same time it is required of him to set the human per-
son and the different human groups (races, classes, nations) free from

57 Gen. 1:28.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE # 41

servitude or subjection to other men, and from that violence by
which one man imposes his power on another by treating him as a
mere instrument.

A second aspect of the natural end of the world is the development
of the multiple immanent (self-perfecting) or spiritual activities of
the human being, especially the development of knowledge, in all its
different degrees. (I ayn speajdng, of course, of authentic knowledge,
immunized againsf the envy which tempts us today to sacrifice wis-
dom to science.) This development also includes the creative activity
of art. (Even in moments when beauty derives no benefit from it*
this activity at least implies a progress in self-awareness.) And in
the realm of moral activity, it means progress in the knowledge of the
natural law', the most unchallengeable example of progress in the
history of mankind.

Finally, we can point to a third aspect of the natural end of the
world— the manifestation of all the potentialities of human nature.
This, too, flows from the fact that man is not a pure spirit, but a
spirit united to matter. It is normal for a spirit to manifest itself. One
could cite here a phrase of the Gospel: "Nothing is hidden which
shall not be unveiled/' 59

ON THE TEMPORAL MISSION OF THE CHRISTIAN

Since my old habits have got the better of me, and since I have be-
gun, God forgive me, to make didactic statements, I might just as
well slip in a few words about the temporal mission of the Christian
to which I alluded earlier.

The need for this mission appears much clearer today than for-

M Mitt. 10:26. Also Lake 8:17. Cf. On the Philosophy of History, p. 125. In
this connection, we added that the very shamelessness of contemporary literature,
despite it* often impure motivations (but it h redeemed by some autobiographical
confession* of incomparable nobility), responds in its deep sources to a secret
necessity and poatesscs ‘‘a kind of eschatological meaning.” In many other ways,
moreover, history has progressively, for centuries, testified to the impulse of which
I am speaking,, to mate manifest w hat is in man.

The reflection* proposed here on the natural end of the world, and those that
follow oti the. temporal mission of the Christian, will be completed in a section of
Ch. 7 (A digression on the temporal mission of the Christian).

4 2

JACQUES MARITAIN

merly. Under the sacral regime of medieval Christianity, and later,
under the increasingly degraded and illusory vestiges and remnants of
this regime in process of dissolution, it was principally through the
social structures, at least in the order of visible activities (I am speak-
ing here only of the latter) that the impact of Christianity was felt,
and, even in the period of sharpest challenge, continued (more and
more powerlessly after the “age of Enlightenment” ) to be felt in
Western civilization.

What, in those times, was asked of the faithful was to give an ex-
ample of the Christian virtues in their private life (they very often
did so in an admirable manner, which helped the venerable tottering
structure to remain standing) and, to the degree that they were able
to influence public opinion or political events, to uphold the rights
and claims of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

But today all that has changed. The temporal world has succeeded
in casting out every trace of the sacral regime. At the same time,
civilization, passing under the control of science and technology, has
unmistakably outgrown the boundaries of the Western world, and is
in the process of becoming truly universal.

Christianity, then, can no longer count on the aid and protection
of social structures. On the contrary, it is up to it to aid and protect
these structures by striving to impregnate them with its spirit. Man’s
duties towards his Creator have a social as well as a personal dimen-
sion, and demand, in particular, that every religiously divided politi-
cal society should recognize the various religious traditions at work
among its citizens. 5 ** The spiritual and the temporal are perfectly dis-
tinct, but they can and should cooperate in mutual freedom.

Not only the West, but the entire world, with its vast non-Chris-
tian cultural areas, requires, within the temporal domain and on
behalf of the progress of temporal civilization, the stimulus and eleva-
tion which Christianity naturally brings to the activities of nature in
their own sphere.

This means that the age we are entering obliges the Christian to
become aware of the temporal mission which he has with respect to
the world and which is like an expansion of his spiritual vocation in the

59 Cf. Man and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), pp.
160-168.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

43

kingdom of God and with respect to it. Woe to the world if the
Christian were to isolate and separate his temporal mission (then it
would be wind only) from his spiritual vocation! The fact remains
that this temporal mission requires him to enter as deeply as possible
into the agonies, the conflicts, and the earthly problems, social or po-
litical, of his age, and not hesitate to “get his feet wet.”

I have said much, in other books, about the temporal mission of
the Christian. It is clear that m speaking of this mission, I am think-
ing, above all, of lay Christians. That some of the clergy should be-
come personally involved in secular affairs is quite possible, but hardly
a requirement of their function. And it happens, when they are not a
Richelieu or a Mazarin, that they handle such affairs less skillfully and
more naively than the laity .® 0 As for the latter, they can, if they like,
indulge in a sort of innocent and rather infantile Christian anticleri-
calism (it is always tempting to make fun of les cures , because at
bottom one really likes them and expects a good deal from them) but
they would turn out to be worse than the worst cures if they con-
ducted their social and political activities like arrogant dreamers,
nourished on a false philosphy that divinizes the world, and bent on
sacrificing everything to efficacy , a passing efficacy.

To be precise, it is not enough to say that the temporal mission of
the Christian is, of itself, the concern of the laity. We must also say
that it is not the business of all lay Christians (far from it!), but only
of those who, by reason of their gifts and natural inclinations, as well
as due to circumstances, feel for it what we can term (the phrase is
rather shopworn, but it is all I have handy) “a calling .”

Finally, we must add that this calling is not enough; a solid interior
preparation is also required. (If, by some misfortune, I chance to feel
“a calling” to touch on this subject, it will be in another chapter.)

60 Let no one see here any kind of allusion to the organizations of Catholic
Action. These organizations by means of which the kity participate in the
apoetolate of the Church, have by definition a spiritual purpose, not a temporal
one. Accordingly, they have nothing to do with what I am saying here. I think
that it falls to them to bring together only a relatively minor segment of the
Christian laity (which would, accordingly, be withdrawn to some degree from
temporal tasks) but I «n persuaded that they are quite necessary. (Cf. Carnet de
Notes, pp. 140-41.) On the kity, its spiritual vocation and its temporal mission,
tee Cb. 7 ( Another digression on the condition of the layman ).

44

JACQUES MARITAIN

A Long Misunderstanding with Bitter Fruit

SPECULATIVE VOCABULARY AND PRACTICAL VOCABULARY

To introduce the third part of this chapter, I must, again taking up
for a moment my old trade of professor, begin with some preliminary
remarks on the difference in approach and vocabulary between specu-
lative knowledge and practical knowledge (that of the moralists and
spiritual writers). Before becoming a peasant of the Garonne I in-
sisted on this difference at some length in The Degrees of Knowl-
edge . On the one hand, what is considered is the ontological structure
of things; on the other, the manner in which the acting subject should
conduct himself in their midst and face to face with them.

The real does not appear in the same light in both cases. The theo-
logian declares that grace perfects nature and does not destroy it; the
saint declares that grace requires us to make nature die to itself. They
are both telling the truth. But it would be a shame to reverse their
languages by making use in the speculative order of formulas which
are true for the practical order, and vice versa.

Let us think of the “contempt for creatures” professed by the
saints. The saint has a right to despise created things (while loving
them); the philosopher and the theologian (who, as such, have the
duty of knowing, not loving) do not have this right; for the word con-
tempt does not have the same meaning in both cases. For the philoso-
pher and the theologian it would mean: creatures are worth nothing
in themselves; for the saint: they are worth nothing for me. And one
need not be a St. John of the Cross, it is enough to be a poet to say
similarly:

Je suis mourant d! avoir compris
Que notre terre riest d f aucun prix. 61

The saint sees in practice that creatures are nothing in comparison
with the One to whom he has given his heart and of the End he has
chosen. This is a lover s contempt for all that is not Love itself. To

C1 Max Jacob.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

45

him, it is nothing to give up “all the wealth of his house” 62 for God.
“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as
a dung hill, in order that I may gain Christ,” St. Paul said, . . that
I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in
his sufferings.” 68

And by a marvelous reflux, the more he despises creatures as rivals
of God, as objects of a possible option against God, the more he
cherishes them in and ^0k Him whom he loves, as loved by him and
made truly good and worthy of being loved by the love which creates
and infuses goodness in all things . 64 For to love a being in God and
for God is not to treat it simply as a means or mere occasion to love
God, which would amount to dispensing oneself from loving it (and
at the same time ceasing truly to love God, who is truly loved only
when we love his visible images, too) : it is to love this being and con-
sider it as an end, to desire its good because it deserves to be loved in
itself and for itself, this very merit and dignity flowing from the sov-
erign Love and sovereign Lovableness of God. They are thus founded
in God and, at the same time, placed beyond all quarrels and vicissi-
tudes. Not to stop short at the creature— that is the guarantee that the
creature will be loved unfailingly, transfixed in the root of its lovable-
ness by the arrow which pierces it. In this way the paradox becomes
comprehensible: that is the end the saint embraces in a universal love
of friendship and piety— a love incomparably more free, but also more
tender and happier than the love of concupiscence of the voluptuary
or the miser— everything that passes in time and all the weakness and
all the beauty of things, everything he has given up . 65

We would be completely mistaken, as I noted earlier, if we were to
give a speculative sense to the formulas of a John of the Cross. “There
is no worse philosophy than a philosophy that despises nature. A
knowledge that despises what is, is itself nothing; a cherry between
the teeth holds within it more mystery than the whole of idealistic
metaphysics.” #c

ca Cant. 8:7.

M Phil. 3:8-10.

u “Amor Dei est infimdans et cream bonitatem m rebus.” (St. Thomas, Sum.
theol.y I, 20, 2.)

OF. The Degrees of Knowledge (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959),
P* 335 -

JACQUES MARITAIN

4 *

THE ^CONTEMPT OF THE WORLD”

AND ITS PERILOUS VICISSITUDES

Well, for most of the faithful and even for the cleric, who have no
access to the modest empyrean, at once temple of wisdom and in-
sane asylum where philosophers and theologians are closeted, it is dif-
ficult to refrain from what I would call a speculative distortion and
misappropriation of the maxims of the saints (by involuntarily depriv-
ing them of their real meaning). The process has taken a great
amount of time, but the fact is that at a given moment they became
the innocent authors, and victims, of such a misappropriation.

To make a long story short (please excuse my oversimplification),
let me say that for centuries (what pedagogy there was was a little
rude: in order to discourage pupils from frequenting bad places, they
were told that the whole town was a death-trap), Christian homiletic
teaching was busy convincing men (who naturally love created things,
but not in the way saints do) that created things are worthless. The
trouble was that by dint of repeating this commonplace, the ascetic
writers and the preachers wound up extending St. Paul's “dung hill"
to the whole of creation, no doubt in as much as it might tempt the
human being, but also, finally, and without being aware of the dis-
tortion, even when the creation was taken in itself. Simply through a
phenomenon of inattention, a masked manicheism was thus superim-
posed on the Christian faith, though without ruining it. (If one had
known what one was doing, what a beautiful contradiction— and for
the delight of our present-day Hegelians, what a fine dialectic! But no,
one was simple trapped by a formula which, in pitch-darkness, had
slipped from one meaning to another.) Hence the creature was in it-
self a dung hill; the world was in itself nothing but corruption. Origi-
nal sin had rotted everything in nature. A Catholic would certainly
not have advanced such a proposition. But it often underlay in a more
or less unconscious way his idea of fallen nature. This view was an
effect of that confusion of levels that I have just been describing. (It
was also, perhaps, an effect of certain infiltrations of Protestant con-
ceptions, and certainly of Jansenist influences which wore so deep in
France, and of which I have not spoken in order not to take too
long.)

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

47

It is worth noting that by the same stroke the formulas of the prac-
tical register itself were being progressively vitiated, all the while
being infiltrated simultaneously by unconscious pelagianism and man-
icheism. It was up to man and the human will to make the first move,
and to do nothing (through fear of hell, we may presume) forbidden
by and displeasing to God. Then God would reward him. And
whereas St. Paul and ajl saints .(for whom the world in itself was not
evil, but rather, if anything, too good) despised the world only by
virtue of boundless love for the One who loved us first, and in com-
parison with him, in order to share in the sufferings and the work of
Jesus — “nothing, nothing, nothing, even to giving one's skin and
everything else for Christ,” ® 7 — the adulterated Christianity I have
been describing, on the contrary, left the divine agape in a sacred
shadow; and in any case, it was not in comparison with God that the
world, in its eyes, was worth nothing: it was worth nothing in itself .
Henceforth the practical formulas which it dispensed became mainly
prohibitive, and caused the values of negation, refusal and fear to be
in the forefront — as well as setting oneself to regard created things as
enemies, and to stay away from them. Lower the eyes, turn away the
head! Flee from dangerous contacts! The moral took precedence over
the theological; the flight from sin over charity and the union of char-
ity. This description has no bearing whatsoever on the real life of the
Church as it was actually carried on in the depths of her being; it has
to do with that version of Christianity that reigned in the mind and
afflicted the mores of the great mass, more or less badly instructed,
of the people of God.

Besides, as a matter of fact, the process which I have pointed out
did not (not yet) in ancient times cause such serious havoc. One lived
in Christendom. One had the cult of the saints who always came to
the rescue. Jn spite of everything, one felt oneself warmed in the
bosom of the Church, and the theological still kept many means of
asserting its supremacy. On the other hand, people were in general
red-blooded enough and led a healthy enough life not to capsize in
psychological troubles, and to maintain their equilibrium, all the while
appreciating only too well this world of which one spoke so ill. They
were in the custom of endowing masses, as often as they could, in or-
der not to remain too long in purgatory, and in the meantime, they
St. John of the Cross (to Ana dc Pefialoara).

48 JACQUES M ARITAIN

busied themselves vigorously with their happiness in this world,
counting, not unreasonably, on the power of a firm and problemless
faith and on God's generosity to have their skin saved at the last mo-
ment. In short, the practical manicheism and pelagianism which I
have mentioned remained external parasites, like the lice on the head
of St. Benedict Labre. They were not viruses attacking the substance
of the Christian faith, and by the same stroke producing in it malig-
nant reactions; for, as I have said at the beginning, this faith is allergic
to any trace of manicheism.

It was in the nineteenth century, and still more in the first half of \
the twentieth, that everything took a decided turn for the worse. Then I
the virus penetrated into the substance. At the same time, the uncon-
scious work which had for so long been carried on in secret took visi-
ble form. Men began to suffer seriously, at times cruelly, from a sort of
invasion of practical manicheism, which chiefly affected educational
procedures and piety, but had a much more general bearing and sig-
nificance, and imposed a completely negativist attitude toward the
world— with all the more aggressiveness as the world itself was making
its claims and promises heard on all sides. From that moment, for a
good many interior souls, the current vocabulary, with its reprobation
of nature and the world, which was hitherto accepted as a matter of
course in this particular rhetoric, grew increasingly difficult to bear,
even when found in books as invaluable as The Imitation of Christ
(as a result, the field of spiritual reading would one day turn out to
be strangely restricted). Other souls rebelled. The mass of people felt
that a grave injustice, against which they were defenseless, was com-
mitted with respect to the world, as well as with respect to them-
selves, and was of a nature to lead to disaster.

The kind of invasion of practical manicheism, whose effects were
felt in this way, did not present itself as a doctrinal error formulated
by the intellect and pronounced externally. No, it was spread in-
wardly, in the form of purely moralistic prohibitions, injunctions to
flight, habits of fear, disciplines of denial in which love had no part,
and which led the soul to starvation and sickliness, and to a torturing
sense of impotence.

I stress this manichean-like aberration at this point, because it is
part of the subject of the present chapter (the meaning of the world

THE FEASANT OF THE GARONNE

49

and the attitude of the Christian toward it), and is the poisonous
fruit of that long misunderstanding I have been discussing in this
section. I should add that this aberration took place in an unfortunate
context which helped sensitize minds to it and, by that very fact,
made its effects more damaging.

The hostility of a civilization in which Christianity— and especially
such a disfigured Christianity — was called to question on all sides, and
where science was held to be the enemy of religion; the weakening
of natural defenses due to modern psychasthenia which was already
so well kept going by psychiatrists, and the weakening of intellectual
defenses due to a teaching extremely poor in matters of doctrine;
the modernist crisis, with its first epidemic of itching ears and
piously intended errors; and in the indispensable struggle against these
errors, the almost exclusive recourse to disciplinary measures; the
spiritual impoverishment of a Christian laity, who continued in gen-
eral to imagine that the call to the perfection of charity, with what it
implies of life of prayer and, as much as possible, of contemplative
recollection, was the exclusive concern of the monks; the confusion
and coalescence, which had been accepted as natural for two cen-
turies, between the interests of religion and those of a social class
furiously attached to its privileges , 68 in some members of which one
saw noble virtues and religious customs, but among others, and more
often, a comfortable practical atheism— all this is the context in which
the rise of masked manicheism I have been discussing took place until
the first third of the present century. All this was going to build up,
in the unconscious of a great many Christians, clerics and laymen, an
enormous weight of frustration, disillusionment, repressed doubts,
resentment, bitterness, healthy desires sacrificed, with all the anxieties
and pent-up aspirations of the unhappy conscience.

Comes the aggiornamento. Why be astonished that at the very an-
nouncement of a Council, then in the surroundings of it, and now
after it, the enormous unconscious weight which I have just men-
tioned burst into the open in a kind of explosion that does no honor
to the human intelligence? Tlius, the Council appears as an island

88 The date of the founding of die review Efprit in France (1932), and of the
Catholic Worker, at nearly the same period in the United States, can be regarded
as marling, at least symbolically, the point of rupture which announced the end
of this confusion.

50 JACQUES MARITAIN

guarded by the Spirit of God in the middle of an qcean which is over-
turning everything, the true and the false, pell-mell.

As far as the attitude of the Christian to the world is concerned,
the pendulum was suddenly carried to the opposite extreme from the
quasi-manichean contempt for the world professed in the Chris-
tian ghetto which we are in the process of leaving behind. This time,
we no longer confront an aberration projected internally in forms
that were somber and tormented, but an aberration which is projected
externally, with all the glamor and happy arrogance of a reason mad-
dened by frenzy for novelty. This is the second poisonous fruit,
equally dangerous, if not more so than the first (on account of its in-
tellectual character), but which will probably not last as long as the
misunderstanding I have been discussing here. For when foolishness
acquires such considerable dimensions among Christians, either it
must be resorbed pretty quickly, or it will ultimately detach them
from the Church. What foolishness? Kneeling before the world. This
will be the subject of the fifth and last section of this chapter.

Schema XIII

THE TEACHING CHURCH, FOR ITS PART, HAS PUT AN END,
THROUGH THE VOICE OF THE COUNCIL, TO THE
LONG MISUNDERSTANDING MENTIONED ABOVE

Schema XIII— the Pastoral Constitution on the Human Condition
in Today s World — is a document of great wisdom and admirable loy-
alty, even more significant, it seems to me, in its general approach
than in its particular clarifications. What is paramount in such a
teaching is not so much its analyses of today's problems, as correct as
they are, but the exposition and complete clarification which it offers
us of the attitude of the Church herself to the world, whether one
considers the unalterable truths on which this attitude is based, or on
the modalities required by the degree of evolution reached by the
world of today.

When he sees to what degree this Pastoral Constitution is impreg-
nated with the spirit and the basic views of the Angelic Doctor, an
old Thomist like myself is cheered.

I think, in particular, that either Christians or non-Christians, all

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

5 1

those who care for man and the future of civilization, are deeply in
its debt for having made the human person, his dignity and his rights,
the central theme of its vast teaching.

In this connection, let us at once take note of an especially impor-
tant fact. The Pope, putting things clearly in focus, reminded us that
the aggiornamento is in no way an adaptation of the Church to the
world, as if the latter were supposed to establish norms for the for-
mer; it is a disclosure of fhe Church's own essential position. Well,
the emphasis of schema XIII on the human person is a remarkable
illustration of this truth. For is not a striking contrast between the
Church and the world to be seen there? In that community of human
persons which is a society, the Church, in keeping with the demands
of truth, gives primacy to the person over the community; 69 whereas
today's world gives primacy to the community over the person — a
highly interesting and significant disagreement. In our age of civiliza-
tion the Church will increasingly become— bless Her— the refuge and
support (perhaps the only one) of the person. Those unfortunate
clerics who do not see that would do well to re-read the Pastoral Con-
stitution.

Allow me a parenthetical remark at this point. Thanks especially, I
believe, to Emmanuel Mounier, the expression “personalist and com-
munitarian” has become something of a catch phrase for French
Catholic thought and rhetoric. I am not without some responsibility
for this myself. At a time when it mattered very much to oppose to
the totalitarian slogans a new— and true — one, I had gently solicited
my gray cells, and finally, in one of my books of that period, advanced
the phrase in question. It is from me, I believe, that Mounier got it.
The expression is right, but when I see the way it is now being used, I

m I do not mean that this primacy forms the object of a particular phrase of
the pastora.1 Constitution, but that for anyone who reads it with care, it is present
and affirmed throughout the overall framework of the Constitution. What the
pastoral Constitution brings to light is the fundamental fact that the human com-
munity is a community of persons; and that, accordingly, tbe common good itself
demands respect for the rights of persons and the recognition of their essential
aspirations. (Let ns not forget that the common good of a community of persona
is “common*' in an eminent sense — that is, common to the whole and to the
parts^en d demands, therefore, to flow bade on the latter, or to be distributed for
the benefit of the persons who compose it. On the other hand, the goods toward
which the human person tench insofar as the spiritual in him is concerned — and
which, in the natural order itaeif, are, tike truth and the things of God, superior
to tbe temporal common good — overflow nevertheless upon this common good,
assisting it and elevating it from above.)

5 2

JACQUES MARITAIN

am not very proud of it. For it is clear that after paying lip-service to
the “personalist,” it is really the “communitarian” which those who
use it cherish.

But let us leave this parenthesis and return to schema XIII.

Its perspective is the same perspective— basically “ontosophic”— as
that of Genesis and the Summa theologica. In other words, it con-
siders the world and nature in their essential structures and* in what
constitutes them in themselves. This is indeed that perspective which
had been neglected and ignored in an increasingly disastrous way dur-
ing the last few centuries. It is this, therefore, that it was all-important
to re-establish, clearly and unmistakably. To have stressed in the
same document a totally different perspective, considering the world
no longer in itself but in its relation to the kingdom of God, would
have risked shuffling the cards by demanding of the intelligence of
readers (to distinguish is a difficult and fatiguing job) an excessive
and too painful effort. (I am afraid that is perhaps what I am about to
do in the present chapter, but a peasant of the Garonne, who commits
only himself, is, naturally enough, not afraid to stick his neck out,
and can run risks which the Fathers of a holy Council have a duty to
avoid.)

Placing itself, accordingly, in the perspective of Genesis and of the
Summa— in other words, considering human nature and the world in
the very elements which constitute their being— the Pastoral Consti-
tution flatly affirms their radical goodness and the call to progress
which, however thwarted by the ambiguity of matter and the wounds
of sin, is inscribed in their essence. It shows, not merely in a general
way, but in a very extended analysis, and with that total generosity
which springs from divine charity, how the Church, even while re-
maining within the sphere of her spiritual mission and of the things
which are God's, can and wants to assist the world and the human
race in their endeavor to advance toward their temporal goals.

Indeed, it is the perennial doctrine of the Church which we see
thereby reaffirmed— but with new and singularly important notes: it is
reaffirmed under the sign of freedom— no longer to claim the Church's
right to intervene ratione peccati in worldly affairs in order to repress
evil (that, I believe, she will always be obliged to do, in one form or
another), but to declare her right, and her will, to quicken, prod and
assist from above ( ratione boni perficiendi , if I may put it that way)

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

53

and without trespassing on the autonomy of the temporal, the de-
velopments of the world toward a greater good to be attained.

The message of the Church to the age is now formulated in a de-
cidedly and blessedly widened manner— no longer as though ad-
dressed to a Christendom which was formerly “sacral” and is now
more or less secularized, but as addressed to the entire world and to
the whole of mankind, to the “profane” civilization which is that of
today, and is now in the process of being extended to all peoples.

The Pastoral Constitution thus opens up immense horizons. We
can say that it is the final liquidation of that masked manicheism
which I spoke of at such length, which had poisoned several centuries
of history, until in our day it had created an untenable psychological
situation, and provoked, in reaction, the most serious crisis.

As to the present crisis itself, with all the confusions, follies and
denials it carries with it, and with that fascinatio nugacitatis to which
it exposes the Christian soul, it will only be liquidated in its turn by a
great and patient work of revitalizing in the order of intelligence and
the order of spirituality. All that the Pastoral Constitution could do
and should do from this point of view, was to lay the foundations for
such a work on a solid and well-swept terrain, by serenely establishing
in their exact meaning— and by the same token, tearing away from
error— the truths which error was exploiting and disfiguring. We owe
it a great debt because it is the effective beginning of the liquidation
of the present crisis. The positions of the teaching Church appear
clearly henceforth. As far as she is concerned, she has, through the
Council, put an end from now on to the misunderstanding from
which Catholic thought has too long suffered as regards the things of
the world.

But among a good many Christians the misunderstanding continues
and grows worse.

Kneeling Before the World

FACTUAL BEHAVIOR AND THOUGHT MORE OR LESS CONFUSED

The present crisis has many diverse aspects. One of the most curious
spectacles it offers us is a kind of kneeling before the world , which is
revealed in a thousand ways.

54 JACQUES MARITAIN

As we have seen, the word “world” can be understood in a number
of different ways. Before what “world,” then, are people kneeling?
The world considered in its natural and temporal structures? Why
certainly. But considered only in that sense, as a good many of those
who kneel seem to believe or would like to believe? I mean, the pure
world of science, of astronomers and geologists, physicists and biolo-
gists, psychologists, ethnologists, sociologists, as well as the world of
technicians, manufacturers, trade unionists, statesmen? Come now!
Have you ever seen a scientist genuflecting to the world (unless by
chance he is a Jesuit, but then he is not a pure scientist, he is an
apologist in disguise)? Have you ever seen a statesman genuflect to
the world (unless he is not a statesman but a megalomaniac like
Adolf Hitler)? That a good many Christians today kneel before the
world is a fact perfectly clear. And this is what we have to look at first
of all. But of what world precisely are we dealing with here? In other
words, what do these Christians have in their mind, what do they
think in behaving this way? This is a good deal more obscure because
for the most part they think very little and confusedly. That will give
us a second question to examine.

What then do we see around us? In large sectors of both clergy and
laity (but it is the clergy who set the example), hardly is the word
“world” pronounced when a gleam of ecstasy lights up the face of one
and all. And immediately what is talked about are the necessary 1
epanouissements (blossomings of dear human nature) and the nec- ^
essary engagements (commitments), as well as the communitarian
fervors, and the presences , the ouvertures (openings to the dear
world), and their joys. Anything that would risk calling to mind the
idea of asceticism, mortification, or penance is automatically shelved
as a matter of course. (If Lourdes remains popular, the words pro-
nounced by the Virgin who appeared there are not.) And fasting is in
such bad repute that it is better to say nothing of the one by which
Jesus prepared for His public mission. A friend of mine recently
heard the Litany of the Saints recited in the vernacular in his parish
church. When the priest reached the invocation: per baptismum et
sanctum jejunium tuum (through your baptism and holy fasting) he
confined himself to saying “through your baptism,” without further
ado. (We do not fast, therefore the Lord didn't fast either.) On an-
other occasion, in the same church, my friend actually heard the line

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

55

of St. Paul: “A thorn was given me in the flesh, an angel of Satan to
harass me” 70 become “I am having trouble with my health." As to
the repugnance felt by our Catholics for fasting, it is not without
some interest to note that it is occurring in the very time when the
disciples of Ghandi have demonstrated the virtues of fasting on the
level of natural mystique and non-violent resistance.

Sex is one of the great and tragic realities of the world. It is curious
to see how much interest, carried to the point of veneration, is mani-
fested in this subject by a crowd of Levites vowed to continence.
Virginity and chastity have a bad press. Marriage, on the other hand,
is fervently idealized, love is its essence. Of its nature, it claims to be
nothing but mutual enchantment, the delight of seeing one’s self re-
flected in the eyes of the other. What is more beautiful than a pair
of young lovers? That's certainly quite true, especially in the works of
the great sculptors. But it's no reason for us to kiss the ground under
their feet.

I know very well that behind the silliness to which I am referring
there is the necessary and urgent awareness of serious (increasingly
serious as time goes on) and often torturous problems. I know very
well that too many people are living in despair, that there are too
many with pent-up anxieties, that far from being a life of delightful
love and mutual gentleness, marriage too often means mutual solitude
and daily apprehension; that too many situations call not only for
pity but for a new attitude on the part of those who have to judge of
them. I think that the Church, who is at last submitting these prob-
lems as a whole to a thorough study, can never be too attentive in en-
lightening the human being about them, nor too merciful to him in
his distresses. The fact remains that none of this makes any less silly
the Catholic veneration of the Flesh to which so many Sheep of
Panurge's are rtiviting us today. Such a veneration would rather be of
a nature to make us regret the ancient pagan cults of Sex and Fertil-
ity which it least were not pieces of trickery.

The other great reality which faces us in the world is Earthly social
Life with ali its conflicts, its sorrows, and its immense set of problems:
starvation, destitution, war, and social and racial injustice. We know
that we must struggle unceasingly against these evils, there is no
need for me to reconsider here what I have said of the temporal mis-

70 St. Pan], i Cor. 12:7.

56 JACQUES MARITAIN

sion of the Christian. Nevertheless, this struggle is not our one and
only duty because the earth and the earthly social life are not the one
and only reality. This temporal duty, moreover, is really and truly ac-
complished by the Christian only if the life of grace and prayer makes
natural energies more pure and upright in the very order of nature.

That is what, at the present, many generous Christians refuse to
see. Accordingly, at least in practice and in their way of acting, and
even— for those who are boldest and most determined to go the
whole way— in doctrine and in their way of thinking (of thinking
about the world and their own religion), the great concern and the
only thing that matters for them is the temporal vocation of the hu-
man race, with its march, embattled but victorious, to justice, peace,
and happiness. Instead of realizing that our devotion to the temporal
task must be that much firmer and more ardent since we know that
the human race will never succeed on this earth in delivering itself
completely from evil— because of the wounds of Adam, and because
our ultimate end is supernatural— they make of these earthly goals
the truly supreme end for humanity.

In other words, there is henceforth only the earth. A complete
temporalization of Christianity! I said before that for the most part
those Christians who kneel before the world don't do much thinking.
To those who have pushed their thinking further, occasionally with a
rigorous and superb logic, this conclusion appears clearly. And so we
hold it at last: the Thought which the Christians kneeling before the
world have in their heads; which, as I said at the beginning of this
section, formed for us the object of a second question to be ex-
amined. They all have this Thought, but those who think in a con-
fused way manage somehow never to discern it. If by some chance it
were spelled out for them, many would rush to disavow it, some
with horror.

The idea of the double movement in which the Christian is en-
gaged, the march toward beatitude (not simple "happiness") and to-
ward the kingdom of God— which has already come (it is the
Church), but which will reach fulfillment and be fully revealed only
in glory and in eternity — and at the same time the march toward the
above-mentioned triple and progressive expansion and the conquests

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

57

to be achieved by man— this true notion makes way to the idea of a
natural Evolution which the liberty of the human being has to acti-
vate and accelerate, and which is drawing the entire world toward
some glorious parousia of the collective Man: which implies contra-
diction, moreover (but that matters little to the grandchildren of
Hegel), for if there is a final term and parousia, evolution stops,
whereas the very essence of man and of earthly life demands that it
continue without end ' : .*

Be that as it may, the distinction between the temporal and the
spiritual, between the things that are Caesar's and the things that are
God’s, inevitably becomes blurred for the fascinated Christians of
whom I am speaking. The more determined of them are already flatly
denying it. That is self-evident: since the kingdom of God has no
reality beyond the world, it is only a leaven in the dough of the
world. If Christ (after all, cannot a broad-minded enough religion
consider that he probably is God— as the greatest of men, a sublime
flower of the human race, in whom the Soul of the world has fully
concentrated itself?), if Christ has a mystical Body, it is the world
which is that mystical Body.

We asked ourselves earlier before what “world” many Christians
are kneeling today. Now we have the answer. It is the world of nature,
yes, the world in its natural and temporal structures, but insofar as it
supposedly absorbs into itself the kingdom of God, and is itself— in a
state of becoming, and, at the final end, in perfect fullness— the
mystical Body of Christ

We can understand henceforth why there are three things an intel-
ligent preacher should never speak about, and which an up-to-date
Christian should think about as seldom as possible, although one has
to recite the Creed each Sunday (but there are so many myths
therein; and besides, one can always repeat a formula — even in the
vernacular— without stopping to think about it).

The first thing to leave in oblivion is obviously the other world
(since there isn't any).

The second thing to leave in oblivion is the cross (it is only a sym-
bol of the momentary sacrifices demanded by progress) .

The third thing to leave in oblivion is sanctity— it it is true that
sanctity has its principle, at the center of the soul (even if the saint

58 JACQUES MARITAIN

remains plunged in the activities of the world) in a radical break with
the world (in the Gospel sense of the word) and with the false god
of the world, its mythical god, “the Emperor of this world.”

THE SAINTS AND THE WORLD

I take the liberty of insisting thereon: if Christians, in effect, were
to renounce keeping in their hearts the desire for sanctity (even if
they only desire it very distantly, excessively distantly, even if they
live in evil), this would be an ultimate betrayal against God and
against the world .

The saints participate throughout the course of time in the re-
deeming work of Jesus on behalf of the world. Their personal relation
to the world is paradoxical and mysterious. For them, it seems to me,
the world is above all an occasion for dying to themselves in order
to be entirely delivered up by love to Love.

Taking up again what I wrote in a small book already a good many
years old , 71 let us try, I would say, to imagine what takes place in the
soul of a saint at the crucial moment when he makes his first irrevoca-
ble decision. Let us picture to ourselves St. Francis of Assisi when he
throws away his clothing and appears naked before his bishop, or St.
Benedict Labre when he decides to become a lice-infested beggar vag-
abonding along the roads. At the root of such an act there was some-
thing so profound in the soul that one does not know how to express
it— let us say that it is a simple refusal, a total, stable, supremely ac-
tive refusal to accept things as they are: it is not a question here of
knowing whether things and nature and the face of this world are
good in their essence — yes, they are, being is good in the very measure
to which it is, grace perfects nature and does not destroy it— but these
truths have nothing to do with the act of interior rupture that we are
considering.' This act has to do with a fact, an existential fact: things
as they are are intolerable. In the reality of existence the world is in-
fected with lying, injustice, wickedness, distress, and misery; creation
has been corrupted by sin to such an extent that in the very marrow
of his soul, the saint refuses to accept it as it is. Evil — I mean by that

71 La Signification de L'Athiisme Contemporain (Paris: Descl^e De Brouwer,
J 949)-

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59

the power of sin, and the universal suffering which it drags in its wake
—evil is such that the only thing he has immediately at hand to op-
pose it totally, and that intoxicates the saint with liberty, exultation,
and love, is to give everything, to abandon everything, the sweetness
of the world, and what is good, and what is better, and what is delect-
able and permitted, and more than anything, himself, in order to be
free to be with God. To do this is to be totally stripped and given
over in order to seize fht power of the cross; it is to die for those he
loves. This is a flash of intuition and will above any order of human
morality. Once the soul of a man has been touched in flight by this
burning wing it becomes a stranger everywhere. It can fall in love
with things, never will it take repose in them. The saint is alone in
treading the wine press, and among the peoples there is no one with
him . 71

As for the one I just called the Emperor of this world, he is the
false god of the philosophers when, knowing of the existence of the
supreme Being, they fail to recognize his glow, deny the abyss of lib-
erty which his transcendance signifies, and chain him to the world
which he himself has made: a false god responsible for the world but
powerless to redeem it, who would only be the supreme guarantee
and justification of the fabric of the world, and would give his sanc-
tion to every evil as well as to every good at work in the world; a god
who would bless injustice and slavery and misery, and make the tears
of children and the agony of the innocent a pure and simple ingredi-
ent of the sacred necessities of the eternal cycles or of the evolution.
Such a god would be the unique supreme Being, to be sure, but
transformed into an idol, the naturalist God of nature, the Jupiter of
this world, the great God of the idolators, of the mighty on their
thrones, and the rich in their earthly glory, of success without law
and pure fact erected into law. With respect to such a god, the saint
is a complete atheist 73 . . . . Such kinds of atheists are the mysterious
pillars of heaven. They give the wodd that supplement of soul, as
Bergson said, which the world needs.

But if the other world is done away with, and if, by the same

71 Uaiah, 63:3.

7a “Were not the Jews aad the -early Christian* often treated as atheists by the
pagans at the time of the Roman Empire? There was a hidden meaning in this
outrage/' (Ibid., p. 28.) Cf. St. Justin, Frrrt Apology , VI, 1: “That is why wc are
called indeed, wc admit it, we are the atheists of these pretended god*."

6o

JACQUES MARITAIN

token, God loses his infinite transcendence, then there is no longer
any Heavenly Father, there is only the Emperor of this world, before
whom everyone should kneel. And the atheists of this false god are
finished, Christians are on their knees before the world, and the
world has lost the saints.

THE INSANE MISTAKE

At the close of our reflections on the age-old misunderstanding
from which Christian thought has suffered in regard to the world, we
are thus brought back to the curious kneeling of which the spectacle
is offered today by believers whose faith in God needs to be re-invig-
orated by the blood transfusion of a passionate faith in the world.

What do we find at the origin of this kneeling? An insane mistake
— the confusion between two completely different senses in which
the same word “world” is being understood.

There is, as we have seen, an “ontosophic truth” about the world
considered in its natural structures or in what properly constitutes it;
in this sense we must say that the world is fundamentally good.

And there is a “religious” or “mystical” truth about the world con-
sidered in its ambiguous relationship to the kingdom of God and the
Incarnation. Then we must say that the world, insofar as it accepts to
be assumed into the kingdom, is saved; while insofar as it refuses the
kingdom, and encloses itself in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of the spirit, it is the adversary of Christ and his
disciples, and hates them.

Well, when people muddle these two understandings of the word
“world,” by imagining that the first truth concerning the world de-
stroys the second, because it signifies that there is no kingdom of God
distinct from the world , and that the world absorbs into itself this
kingdom , then it is the world itself which is the kingdom of God, in a
state of becoming (and, at the final end, in glory). And it hasn't the
slightest need to be saved from above, nor to be assumed and finally
transfigured in Another world, a divine world. God, Christ, the
Church, the sacraments, are intrinsic to the world, as constituting its
soul which fashions little by little its body and its supra-individual
personality. It is from within, and by means of its soul, itself at work

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

61

within it, that the world will be saved, or rather that it saves itself and
exalts itself. Down on your knees, then, with Hegel and his followers,
before this illusory world; to it our faith, out hope, our love! We are
more Christian than ever since Christ is in it, and is consubstantial
with it (if I may employ a word so ill-considered by the French trans-
lators of the Creed).

Reality nevertheless remains what it is, not what we would like it to
be. In fact God is infinitely transcendent; in fact there is a superna-
tural order which is the order of grace; in fact there was an event
called the Incarnation of the eternal Word; in fact there is Another
world, which is the kingdom of God already begun. And thus in
spite of our dreams, in kneeling before the world, it is not of a world
which would absorb into itself the kingdom of God, it is of a world
which refuses all that, and which wants neither Christ (“the world
hates me”) nor the kingdom of God, it is of the world withdrawn
into itself, and enemy of the Gospel that we are friends . It is to this
world and the false god who is its Emperor (and not merely, as we
perhaps believe unless we take the trouble to reflect a little, before the'
world of nature and of science) that we are genuflecting.

Such is the mistake of the Christians who are led astray by our mo-
ment in history and the sudden displacement of the pendulum, now
flung to the opposite extreme from the masked manicheism which,
for a century and a half, has wrought disastrous havoc.

At this point it is suitable to say with particular insistence: haec
oportebat facere , et ilia non omittere , “These things you ought to
have done, and the others not to have omitted /' 74 It was necessary to
struggle against the world as the adversary of the saints, but without
neglecting (this is said for the past) to devote oneself to the temporal
progress of a world oppressed by injustice and misery. And it is neces-
sary to dedicate ourselves to this temporal progress, but without ne-
glecting (this is said for today) to struggle against the world as the
adversary of the saints.

Not only are the two tasks compatible, they call for one another.
The temporal progress of the world requires the re-enforcement that
comes from the kingdom of God elevating and enlightening souls,
accordingly requires the struggle against the world insofar as it is the
enemy of the kingdom. r Fhe progress of souls toward the kingdom of

74 Matt. 13:23.

62

JACQUES MARITAIN

God requires them to love the world with that love which is charity
as a creature of God on the way to its own natural ends, and therefore
to cooperate in its temporal struggle against injustice and misery.

After all, why should I not point out that for thirty or forty years,
I myself, to the extent of my powers, have borne witness to the neces-
sity of this twofold task, as well as to the two contrasting truths (ac-
cording to the point of view in which one is placed) that we must at
all costs maintain on the subject of the world? Summarizing all this, I
wrote in On the Philosophy of History: “The fact of so many millions
of men starving and living in despair, in a life unworthy of man, is an
insult to Christ and to brotherly love. As a result, the temporal mis-
sion of the Christian is to strive to eradicate such evils, and to try to
build up a Christian-inspired social and political order, where justice
and brotherhood will be better and better served.” 75 And in the
same book I also wrote: “St. Paul has said: 'All who desire to live a
godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution/ 76 It is certainly not
a very optimistic statement with respect to the world. The Christian,
because he is not of the world, will always be a foreigner in the world
— I mean, in the world as separating itself from the kingdom of God
and shutting itself up in itself; he is incomprehensible to the world
and inspires it with uneasiness and distrust. The world cannot make
sense of the theological virtues. Theological faith, the world sees as a
challenge, an insult, and a threat; it is by reason of their faith that it
dislikes Christians, it is through their faith that they vanquish it; faith
is enough to divide them from the world. Theological hope, the
world does not see at all; it is simply blind to it. Theological charity,
the world sees the wrong way; it misapprehends it, is mistaken about
it. It confuses it with any kind of quixotic devotion to whatever hu-
man cause it may profit by. And thus does the world tolerate charity,
even admire it— insofar as it is not charity, but something else. (And
so charity is the secret weapon of Christianity.)” 77

If there are any prophets of the avant-garde or of the rear guard
who imagine that our duties to the world, such as they have been
brought to light under the grace of the Holy Spirit by the Second

75 On the Philosophy of History , op. cit. y p. 154.

7 « 2 Tim. 3:12.

77 On the Philosophy of History t op. cit., p. 148.

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6 3

Vatican Council, erase what the Lord Jesus Himself and His apostles
have said of the world— T/ze world hates me, The world cannot re-
ceive the Spirit of truth, If anyone loves the world the love of the
Father is not in him , and all the other texts that I recalled earlier— I
know well what must be said of such prophets (a saying of questiona-
ble taste but one which used to amuse an old Dominican dear to my
heart) : they are poking the finger of God in their eye.

February 14, 1966

4 THE TRUE NEW FIRE

CHRISTIANS AND
NON-CHRISTIANS

THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF A NEW AGE

On the duration of the crisis I have just been discussing, the reactions
it will produce, the rubble it will leave in its wake, the gravity that it
can assume at certain moments or in certain countries, one would
have to be a prophet to hazard the slightest opinion. Everything de-
pends on the unforeseeable ways of God and his secret graces, to-
gether with human liberty, comprised as it is in his eternal plan. What
is certain is that the Church will emerge from this crisis wonderfully
purified; error will not have got the better of her.

It is certain also, as so many voices rightly tell us, that the Vatican
Council was the announcement of a new age. As I have noted before
and have no need of repeating, the Council itself sketched the broad
outlines of this new age when it aggiornamented the eternal treasures
of the Church, thanks to a more profound awareness and a more com-
plete explanation of certain great truths hitherto contained in these
treasures.

On the other hand, we can observe that by a paradox not rare in
human history, what is disfigured and distorted frequently appears
before what is straight, the counterfeit product before the authentic
thing. If I am not mistaken, there were more or less heretical
fraticelli before St. Francis of Assisi. Didn't Habacuc say that the
devil marches before the feet of God? 1 One can imagine him easily
enough as a cur yelping and snarling before the feet of the Lord and
biting whoever he can. Instead of saying the "devil," the best modern
translators say the "plague," which suits my purpose just as well, since

1 Habac. 3:5.

64

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

65

what I actually have in mind is the dangerous fever of veneration for
the world which is raging today among a certain number of naive but
often quite generous people.

Obsolete from the instant they make their appearance, the different
forms of neo-modemism with which we have been concerned in the
preceding chapters are products of anticipated counterfeit which set
the mind off in a false track. The true new fire, the genuine dis-
coveries which will ocCur in the new age we are entering, and by
means of which, in the historic perspectives opened by the Council,
Christian consciousness will penetrate deeper and further into the
truth by which it lives and the evangelical reality, will have nothing in
common with the collection of old repressed desires and confused
ambitions with which the public relations men of the Old Liar are
operating. Nor will it have anything in common with their pseudo-
scientific and pseudo-philosophical claptrap, nor with that holy par-
ousia of Man in the name of which they call for a Christian kneeling
before the world.

The true new fire, the essential renewal, will be an inner renewal.
One need not be a prophet to see that; it is enough to open one's
eyes. To speak with competence on the different aspects of this inner
renewal, it would be necessary to have an intelligence above the
average, like all those who exchange ideas on television. It is very
timidly, then, that I shall try to say something about that in this
chapter and those that follow, as an old man who blinks his eyes and
isn't very intelligent (which is not too serious) but who, for all that,
is not a child of light (which is vexing). For it has been said (what
follows is a loose translation): “The children of light are far from
knowing their business as astutely as the children of the age." 2 In-
deed, that is rather obvious.

PRACTICAL COOPERATION IN A DIVIDED WORLD

This chapter will deal with the renewal of our thought (and con-
sequently, our behavior) toward non-Christians.

To begin with, one can consider Christians and non-Christians
simply insofar as they are men. This is merely an introduction or
2 Luke 16:8.

66

JACOUES MARITAIN

preliminary consideration of the subject; it is useful all the same.

Holding myself then, to begin with, in this perspective, allow me to
use here a few passages from a speech I delivered some twenty years
ago to a conference of UNESCO. (It will give an old hand like me a
chance to catch his breath and, come to think of it, it was not so
badly put, although in a style which is no longer mine.) It was the
problem of peace among nations that occupied our minds, and it was
in terms of this problem that I took for my theme “The Possibilities
of Cooperation in a Divided World / 73 I asked: In this world pros-
trated by post-war grief, and by the leaden mantle of rival economic,
political and ideological interests, shall not those who are dedicated
to the works of the mind and who feel the responsibility of such a
mission give voice to the primitive instinct for preservation, to the
immense longing for peace and freedom, to the repudiation of death
and misfortune which, despite a strange apparent passivity more
closely resembling despair than strength of soul, are stirring within
the deepest recesses of men's consciousness? Yet, at first glance there
is something paradoxical in UNESCO's task: it implies intellectual
agreement among men whose conceptions of the world, of culture, of
knowledge itself are different or even mutually opposed. They belong
not merely to different civilizations, but to antagonistic spiritual fami-
lies and philosophic schools. How is an agreement of thought con-
ceivable between them?

My response was that the finality of UNESCO was a practical
finality, and hence “agreement among its members can be spontane-
ously achieved, not on common speculative notions, but on comnton
practical notions; not on the affirmation of the same conception of
the world, man and knowledge, but on the affirmation of the same set
of convictions concerning action. This is doubtless very little; it is the
last refuge of intellectual agreement among men. It is, however,
enough to undertake a great work."

When it is a question, not of a common speculative ideology, nor of
common explanatory principles, but, on the contrary, of the basic

3 This speech was given in Mexico on November 1, 1947, at the opening of
the second International Conference of UNESCO; I was the president of the
French delegation. (The complete text is in my book, Le Philosophe dans la Cite ,
Paris; Alsatia, i960); the English translation makes up Ch. XIII of my previ-
ously published collection, The Range of Reason (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1952), Ch. XIII, pp. 172-184.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

67

practical ideology and the basic principles of action implicitly recog-
nized today, in a vital if not a formulated manner, by the conscious-
ness of free peoples, this happens to constitute grosso modo a sort of
common residue, a sort of unwritten common law, at the point of
practical convergence of extremely different theoretical ideologies and
spiritual traditions. To understand that, it is sufficient to distinguish
properly between the rational justifications, inseparable from the
spiritual dynamism^of 3 philosophical doctrine or a religious faith, and
the practical conclusions which, separately justified for each, are, for
all, analogically common principles of action. I am fully convinced
that my way of justifying the belief in the rights of man and the ideal
of liberty, equality, fraternity, is the only one which is solidly based
on truth. That does not prevent me from agreeing on these practical
tenets with those who are convinced that their way of justifying them,
entirely different from mine, or even opposed to mine in its theo-
retical dynamism, is likewise the only one that is based on truth.
Assuming they both believe in the democratic charter, a Christian
and a rationalist will, nevertheless, give justifications that are incom-
patible with each other, to which their souls, their minds and their
blood are committed, and about these justifications they will fight.
And God keep me from saying that it is not important to know which
of the two is right! That is essentially important. They remain, how-
ever, in agreement on the practical affirmation of that charter, and
they can formulate together common principles of action.

Thus, in my opinion, can the paradox I pointed out earlier be
solved. The ideological agreement which is necessary between those
who work toward making science, culture and education contribute to
the establishment of a true peace, is restricted to a certain body of
practical points and of principles of action. But within these limits
there is, and there must be, an ideological agreement which, for all its
merely practical nature, is none the less of major importance. In the
justification he offers for that body of practical principles, everyone
commits himself fully, with all of his philosophical and religious con-
victions— how could he speak with faith, if not in the light of the
speculative convictions which quicken his thought? But he is not en-
titled to demand that others subscribe to his own justification of the
practical principles on which all agree. And the practical principles
in question form a sort of charter which is indispensable for any effec-

6S

JACQUES MARITAIN

tive common action, and the formulation of which would matter to
the good itself and the success of the peace-making work to which
their common endeavors are dedicated . 4

It was on these bases that some years later the United Nations for-
mulated the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man— a docu-
ment of great historic significance. Naturally, it is just as important to
refrain from indulging in illusions. And it is clear that in the manner
of applying the practical principles formulated in common, considera-
ble differences are to appear, due to the spirit, the theoretical convic-
tions, the religious faith or the philosophical dogmas which inspire
and make larger and more exalted, or narrower and lower, the action
of those who, in this case, do not merely formulate, but put existen-
tially the practical principles in question to work. Did I not note at
the beginning that an agreement of thought on common principles
which are merely practical is very little indeed —' “the last refuge of
agreement among minds ' 7 — in other words, a bare minimum, so much
the more necessary since without it there is nothing left but inexpia-
ble conflict, the mortal war to which the dissensions now tearing the
world asunder would, if left to themselves, lead?

The fact remains that, as I said at the close of my address in
Mexico, we all know that if the work of peace is to be prepared
in the thought of men and in the consciousness of nations, it is on
the condition that minds come to be deeply convinced of princi-
ples like the following: Good politics is first and foremost a politics
that is just— every people should strive to understand the psychology,
the development and traditions, the material and moral needs, the
proper dignity and historic calling of the other peoples, because every
people should look out not only for its own advantages but for the
common good of the assembly of nations— this awakening of mutual
understanding and of the sense of the civilized community, though
it supposes (given the age-old habits of human history) a sort of
spiritual revolution, nevertheless answers requirements of public em-
ergency in a world which, from now on, is one world for life or for
death, while it remains disastrously divided as to political passions
and interests— to place national interest above everything is a sure
means of losing everything— a community of free men is only con-
ceivable if it recognizes that truth is the expression of what is, and
right the expression of what is just, and not of what is most expedient

4 Cf. The Range of Reason, pp. 180-181.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

69

at a given time for the interest of the human group— it is not permis-
sible to take the life of an innoeent man beeause he has beeome a use-
less and eostly burden to the nation, or beeause he impedes the suc-
cessful undertakings of any group whatsoever— the human person is
endowed with a dignity which the very good of the community pre-
supposes and must, for its own sake, respect, and is also endowed,
whether as a eivie, or as a soeial or working person, with certain funda-
mental rights and fundamental obligations— the common good eomes
before private interests— the world of labor has a right to the social
transformations required by its coming of age in human history, and
the masses have a right to participate in the common treasure of cul-
ture and of the spirit— the domain of consciences is inviolable— men
of various beliefs and spiritual lineages must recognize each others
rights as fellow-citizens in the civilized community— it is the duty of
the State, for the very sake of the common good, to respect religious
freedom as well as freedom of research— the basie equality of men
makes prejudices of race, class or caste, and raeial discrimination,
offenses against human nature and the dignity of the person as well
as a deep-seated threat to peaee.

If a state of peaee worthy of the name, firm and enduring, is to be
established one day among the peoples of the world, this will depend
not only upon the economic, political and financial arrangements
readied by diplomats and statesmen, nor will it depend solely upon
the juridical building up of a truly supra-national eo-ordinating organ-
ism endowed with efficient means of aetion; it will depend also upon
the deep adherence of men’s consciousness to practical principles like
those I have recalled. And, to state things as they are, it will depend
also upon that bigger soul whieh, aeeording to Bergson, our world, be-
come technically greater, needs, and upon a victorious outpouring of
that supreme and free energy whieh eomes to us from on high, and
whose name we know— whatever may be our religious denomination
or sehool of thought— to be brotherly love, a name whieh has been
pronounced in sueh a manner by the Gospel that it has stirred the
conscience of man for all time . 5

I hope these long explanations will be exeused. I had to make as
clear is possible, in a particular example, this somewhat doctoral yet
indeed far-reaching assertion that if men are genuinely to cooperate in
view of certain objectives whieh have to do with the common good of

h Op. cit., pp. 183-184.

?o

JACQUES M ARITAIN

mankind, it will be only on condition that they can establish an intel-
lectual agreement on the basis of common practical principles in spite
of their irreducible divisions on the level of speculative convictions.
In other words, on condition that they are able to formulate together
certain common principles of action.

We can be sure that what is true in the case of this objective— peace
to be assured among nations— is similarly true when it comes to any
other objective of major importance for human welfare.

We need only to add that once all this is clear, and we have firmly
rejected the once haughty and queer idea that divisions and opposi-
tions in the speculative domain, however radical and irreducible, de-
stroy any chance of genuinely effective agreement and practical
cooperation, and condemn us either to perpetual wars, or to subordi-
nating everything to the victory (by strength of argument or force of
arms) of one philosophical or religious creed over all the others, we
should also beware of deviating in an opposite direction with not less,
but even more, catastrophic results. For it would amount to ignoring
the imprescriptible rights of the speculative order — in other words, of
truth itself, which is superior to every human interest. It could hap-
pen that in the name of realizing an agreement on the level of practi-
cal principles and of action, we would be tempted either to ignore or
to forget our speculative convictions because they clash with each
other, or else to dilute, conceal, or camouflage their opposition by
making the yes and no kiss one another— and betraying what is— for
the good looks of human brotherhood. This would not only be throw-
ing truth to the dogs, but throwing to the dogs human dignity as
well, and our supreme raison d'etre. The more we fraternize on the
level of practical principles and common action, the more we should
strengthen the edges of the opposite convictions which divide us in
the speculative order and on the level of truth, the first to be served.

BROTHERLY LOVE AMONG MEN WHO ARE ALL
(AT LEAST POTENTIALLY) MEMBERS OF CHRIST

The preceding was only a preliminary consideration. I come now to
something much more significant and much more important, in
which I see one of the features of the new age we are entering and of
the true new fire that has been kindled in our hearts.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

7 1

Here I am no longer considering Christians and non-Christians
simply as men . I am considering them as members of Christ: explicitly
and visibly members of Christ if they are Christians (living members
if they have grace, “dead" members if they have lost it); members of
Christ implicitly and invisibly if being non-Christians they have
Christ's grace; • potentially and invisibly members of Christ if being
similarly non-Christians they do not have Christ's grace.

I don't know if the' VdtabuTary I have just used is perfectly exact:
that's a question for the author of The Church of the Word Incar-
nate, , But what I do know is that in one guise or another and in one
way or another, all men , at least potentially, are members of Christ,
since he came into this world and suffered death for all of them and,
since, barring a refusal on their part at the final instant of their life,
he has saved all of them. And didn't Christ himself say that when-
ever we give or do not give food or drink to any man whatever, as
soon as he is in want, we are giving (or refusing to give) to Him? To
Him because this poor man is a member, at least potentially, of
Christ's body.

Nothing is superior to truth. But on the level of action there are
practical truths toward which viewpoints mutually opposed on the
level of speculative truth can converge. That is why, as we have seen,
there can be agreement and cooperation in regard to action and
purely practical principles, between men who are divided in their
deepest convictions.

Now, in our present remarks, it is no longer by reason of a practical
common goal and an action to be conducted in common that men
must reach agreement on practical common principles; it is by reason
of a reality infinitely more important, though perfectly invisible, and
which is not a thing to do, but which is there , at least potentially—
the fact of their belonging to the Mystical Body through grace; and it
is by reason of fraternal love to which all are called, and of divine
charity to which all are called, that we ought to suppose that each has
in his heart (“suppose," because no one can judge the inmost recesses
of the soul)— it is by reason of this mysterious supernatural reality
that men, as divided as they might be in their most profound
convictions, can and should look each other in the eyes with respect,

e They are members of Christ in act since they have grace and charity, but with-
out the consequences which, of its nature, this "in act" demands to have, being
made explicit.

72 JACQUES MARITAIN

and desire a true mutual comprehension, and be ready to help one an-
other sincerely.

How can this happen? By knowing (I am speaking of Christians,
and Christians know this) that they are all members of Christ, at
least potentially, and all called to the life of grace and charity; and by
each one presupposing (I am still speaking of Christians) that the
other lives in the grace and charity of God. When it comes to non-
Christians, they can do this by making an analogous supposition ,
each from his own religious or philosophical standpoint (even if, in
the case of the atheist, it is only the perspective of universal human
solidarity and the common vocation of mankind), on levels of
thought more or less inferior in the scale when compared to the level
of those to whom God's Word has been revealed.

Having said that, I will pause for a moment. After all, it is to Chris-
tians that I'm actually speaking in this book (my last, I hope). And
it is first and foremost for Christians that the Council was the procla-
mation of a new age. It is first and foremost from Christians and
among Christians that a genuine renewal is to be expected. It is first
and foremost in them that the true new fire should be kindled. It is
therefore natural that my reflections should turn especially to them,
considered in their relations— henceforth profoundly renewed— with
non-Christians.

If what I have advanced earlier is true, they have to treat with non-
Christians, not, certainly, by forgetting that the latter are not Chris-
tians, but by attaching to this fact, which is visible, a secondary
importance so far as their own personal attitude toward them goes.
The primary importance here belongs to another fact, an invisible
one: that these non-Christians are , at least potentially, members of
Christ.

Thereby we can see to what extent the new fire, the essential re-
newal, is an inner renewal. For it consists of a change of attitude, or
a displacement of values that takes place in the deepest recesses of the
soul, and has to do, first of all and essentially, not with any way of
acting or externally behaving (that will come, but as a corollary), nor
with any method of approach or apostolate, any tactic or strategy, or
any honest and white trickery to try out on our non-Christian
brothers, but with a way of seeing them before God, and a way of lov-
ing them better , in a deeper and more genuine conformity with the

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

73

spirit of the Gospel. This inner renewal consists in becoming fully
aware of the dimensions and “weight” of evangelical love, and in com-
pletely liberating this love in the soul, so that no final purpose, how-
ever lofty, exterior to its own essence, can come to mark out a road for
it and restrict it to a particular object.

What I mean (to speak in general and of the inner attitude of the
average Christian) is that for a long time we loved non-Christians—
truly and sincerely — alth0ugli~they were not Christians (it was this
risible fact which took precedence). In other words, we loved non-
Christians primarily inasmuch as, having the misfortune not to be
Christians, they were called to become so; we loved them primarily
not as men or for what they were , but as Christians to be or for what
they are called to become. We loved them primarily as people sitting
in the shadow of death, toward whom our first duty of charity was to
strive to convert them to the true faith. But now, by virtue of the
great inner reversal I am stressing, w T e love non-Christians above all
because they are, at least potentially , members of Christ (the invisible
fact has now taken precedence); we love them primarily as human
persons who are members, at least potentially, of this incarnate Truth
whom they do not know and whom the errors professed by them
deny. In short, we love them first of all in their own unfathomable
mystery, for what they are , and as men in regard to whom the first
duty of charity is simply love. And so, we love them first and foremost
the way they are, and in seeking their own good, toward which, in ac-
tual existence, they have to advance within a religious universe and a
system of spiritual and cultural values where great errors may abound,
but where truths worthy of respect and of love are likewise certainly
present. Through these truths, it is possible for the One who made
them, for the Truth who is Christ, to touch their hearts in secret,
without themselves or anyone in the world being aware of it.

No doubt, it is always in this way and with this evangelical love
fully liberated in the soul, that the great missionaries loved those to
whom they were sent to announce the Gospel. It w ? as in this manner
and with such a love that St. Francis Xavier loved them and that
Pdre Lcbbe loved them. But I w'ould note in the first place that this
holy reality which dwelt within them and animated everything in
them, and which is the soul of all missionary action worthy of the
Gospel, was lived by them at so deep a level that they themselves

74

JACQUES MARITAIN

surely were aware of it, but without feeling, I think, a need to con-
sider it apart from their mission as apostles of the Gospel, precisely
because it was an integral part of this mission. In their time such an
aspect of the inner Christian behavior had not yet been brought out
as a special matter of attention and reflection for common conscious-
ness, and no other kind of “mission” of the Christian with respect to
the non-Christian— like the prophetic mission of Pere de Foucauld
who went and buried himself among the Berbers for the sole purpose
of loving them and understanding them with love— had yet been ex-
plicitly recognized and brought to light.

In the second place, I note (and here I must be very careful, I am
treading on dangerous ground, I know) that we may probably doubt
that all missionaries have had their own vocation as converters rooted
in that kind of evangelical love, I mean in the love of non-Christians
not only a$ being called to become Christians, but first of all as men
(potentially members of Christ) in other words, for themselves and
for what they are. When one sees how Pere Lebbe was treated by his
missionary colleagues, and forced to leave China until the Pope saw
to it that justice was done, one has a right to doubt whether the kind
of love we are now discussing was very widespread among the col-
leagues in question. One could not possibly reproach them for this.
They were simply living according to the commonly received concep-
tion of their day in which charity toward non-Christians, loved pri-
marily insofar as they were called to become what they were not, had
for its primary obligation to work to their conversion to the true faith,
and was wholly absorbed in self-devotion to this goal. It was lucky if
from disappointment to disappointment, many poor missionaries did
not feel their souls invaded by bitterness. (I hope I have not offended
anyone.)

Here I am back at my theme: the absolute primacy of agapb, of
brotherly love fully liberated in the soul; in such a way that the great
renewal in the attitude of Christians toward non-Christians with
which we are concerned here may be described as a kind of epiphany
of evangelical love. If it were not that first and foremost, in the inner-
most recesses of the soul, and if nevertheless it laid claim to make all
men embrace one another, it would be nothing but mummery.

A»d here I look as if preaching, which is not my role at all, and

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

75

makes me feel like dropping the whole business. After all, if I can't
manage to master my own style, that's too bad for me. Nevertheless,
I must complete the reflections I have begun.

A word remains to be said (not just one word, alas, but several
pages) to avoid all misunderstanding. I have said that the true new
fire, the essential renewal, is an inner renewal. But it is clear also that
what takes place in the depth of the soul involves, in addition to that,
a certain external bdhavior and is translated into the sphere of action.

From this point of view one could, it seems to me, distinguish
three different zones of behavior.

A Christian who loves non-Christians in the way I have tried to do-
fine, can bear witness to this love before God by his prayeT, and be-
fore men by his life; I say uniquely by his life: in responding to a
newly perceived invitation in the call of the Gospel, he goes and bides
himself in the midst of those he loves, with no other purpose other
than to love them and to understand them with love, in sharing their
life, their poverty, their sufferings, and without having the least inten-
tion of converting them, even by what is sometimes called a work of
“pre-apostolate" (a pernicious word which involves a misunderstand*
ing, and would transform into a prudent preface for action or a secret
agent's tactic the authenticity and sincerity of the pure and simple
fraternal love for these non-Christians as they are, and not as one
hopes they may become; for of itself this pure and simple fraternal
love suffices— tiniim est nectssarium — and at that level it is to it
alone, that one must bear witness). Such a life makes no sense
unless it is an exclusively contemplative life, like that of the Little
Brothers and Little Sisters of Jesus. There is what I call the first zone
of behavior.

The second zone of behavior is characterized, it seems to me, by
the fact that a Christian who loves non-Christians in the way that I
have tried to define, bears witness to this love by a work which
makes it visible in the sphere of action, or of external activity.

I am thinking here of all the works of mercy and of brotherly assist-
ance that we can undertake, whether by ministering to the urgent
needs created by misery, sickness, famine, etc., or by cooperating m
the improvement of conditions of life and in the great effort accom-
plished by the countries underdeveloped in the social, economic, and

76 JACQUES MARITAIN

cultural order, in view of attaining the common level of a civilization
that has become universal. Here, clearly, is an immense task which is
already well under way.

I am thinking also of the work, no less vast and no less important
by which, in the intellectual order, scholars and specialists strive to
know better the past and present of non-Christian civilizations (with-
out forgetting people called primitive) — the social, moral and cultural
structures of these areas of civilization, their special traditions, and
above all their religion itself and their spirituality. Thus we find, and
it is a true joy to state this, that Christian scholars are helping non-
Christians to see more clearly into their own affairs and into what is
closest to their hearts, and are succeeding in this much better than the
pure rationalists. The work of Louis Massignon in respect to Islam has
been exemplary from this point of view. (I take the liberty of adding,
for those persons, however eminent, who remain insufficiently in-
formed of the merits of the Summa theologica , that these days it is
Thomists like Olivier Lacombe and Louis Gardet who are doing
the most enlightened work in Indian and Islamic studies, and who are
on terms of the most intimate and cordial friendship with the repre-
sentatives of Indian and Moslem thought.) Besides, I see no reason
why non-Christian scholars and specialists could not also help us,
their opposite numbers, to gain a better insight into our proper affairs.
For example, I wish that one of them would study, from his own
point of view and in the light of his own traditions, St. John of the
Cross for example or Pere Surin, just as Massignon studied Hallaj. I
don't say that he would understand them better than Catholic theolo-
gians, or that we would always agree with their interpretations. But I
say it would give us a chance to widen our horizons and perhaps on
certain points to renew our understanding of the problems involved.

The third zone of behavior is that of the apostolate and the mission.
Here again, it is through a work concerning the sphere of external ac-
tivity, that the Christian who loves non-Christians in the way I have
tried to define bears witness to this love. But this time we are dealing
with the most exalted activity, the highest conceivable work of char-
ity. For this activity responds to an express command of the Lord:
Go teach all nations. It is the continuation of the preaching of Christ
when he traveled the roads of Judea and Galilee to proclaim the
kingdom of God. That the Truth should be known by men is the

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

77

ardent desire of the eternal Truth descended on earth to assume our
flesh. Moreover, to know the Truth, the Truth that frees, is the abso-
lutely first need of the human being. Non in solo pane vivit
homo. . . . No activity better serves man or testifies better to the
fraternal love kindled in us by the Gospel than that by means of
which Truth comes to make itself known to him, and illumines his
heart.

Does this mean that" apostolic activity would be something better
than the love from which it derives and which it manifests? Apostolic
activity is what is highest in the order of activity. But no activity is
higher and better than the love of charity, higher and better than
agape. “ There is no work better or more necessary than love ” 7

St. John of the Cross also said: "God makes use of nothing other
than love /' 8 Not only the greatest missionaries, but all who are today
called to missionary work have a better understanding of this; it is
here that the new fire, the essential renewal announced and willed by
the Council, influences missionary activity in its living works, rejuven-
ating and reinvigorating it, but also raising new problems for it. Thus
renewed, missionary work requires from now on that each one in-
volved in it become aware of what was in the heart of a St. Francis
Xavier or a Pere Lebbe. In other words, apostolic preaching must be
rooted in the love of the non-Christian, loved primarily not as a po-
tential convert, but for himself and for what he is— a member of
Christ, at least potentially. Such a reversal of values in the depths of
the soul, and therefore in techniques and methods of approach, is
already an accomplished fact. There is not very much in common be-
tween the ways the great missionary orders followed fifty years
ago and those they follow today. I have no competence to discuss
this matter, and it is not my subject. I would simply imagine that
what brought this revolution about was the will to draw all the conse-
quences from a truth of which no one is unaware— namely, that it is
not his ministers but Jesus himself who converts souls by the hidden
windings of his grace, so that preaching and teaching come to achieve
rather than to start the secret motions awakened in souls by his love
and the iove of his servants.

7 St. John of the Cross, Cant. (2nd ed.), str. iS ( 19), Sitv. Ill, p. 361.

8 Ibid., str. 27 (18), SJv. Ill, p. 356.

7 *

JACQUES MARITAIN

TWO SHORT ANECDOTES

There is nothing simpler, and at bottom more ordinarily Chris-
tian, than the inner renewal which has been the subject of all the
preceding pages. Fifty years from now, one will doubtless be as-
tonished to think that Christians could ever have behaved otherwise.
Two short anecdotes may perhaps help us grasp to what extent there
is, for those of u$ who were born in the nineteenth century or at the
beginning of the twentieth, something really new.

I knew a very celebrated writer. He was not a Catholic and his
moral life was not very edifying. One day when I went to pay him a
visit, he spoke to me of another great writer, a Catholic, who had been
his friend. He told me how at the time when this friendship was
formed he had considered himself duty bound, in fairness, to confide
in that person, even at the risk of scandalizing him, the manner in
which he was living. He later received letters from his friend assuring
him that he now loved him all the more deeply. The letters were so
beautiful and generous that the writer who told me all this had been
overwhelmed by them. I can still see him opening a drawer of his
writing table and showing me that bundle of letters. Though many
years had passed, he wept when he showed them to me. But the
Catholic writer— as sincere and generous as a man could be— was con-
vinced that his absolutely first duty in charity toward this sinner lay in
his doing everything in his power to bring him to the true light. He
therefore set out, and with heart and soul, to try and convert him. In
spite of long and patient efforts, he did not succeed. Concluding at
last that his colleague was definitely incapable of being converted,
what could he do, alas, but pass judgment against him and abandon
him to the devil? This was hardly the kind of thing to soften the heart
of his ex-friend, and better dispose him to receive the grace of God if
some day it should come knocking more forcefully at the door of his
soul. Doubtless the Catholic writer had his reasons, for the non-Cath-
olic, in constant evasions, used a good many tricks of his own. (I am
not sure that in telling me this story, he wasn't trying to win me over
to his side by playing a little too strongly on my feelings.) But the
fact remains that, in acting as he did, the Catholic had simply fol-
lowed the line of behavior— the pattern currently accepted at that

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

79

time in regard to relations between a believer and an unbeliever. They
are both dead, and, please God, now reconciled.

The second anecdote concerns me personally. Twenty years ago a
friend of mine who was a great French theologian— and whose friend-
ship has never faltered— told me one day that he had a bone to pick
with me, and he didn't go any too gently about it. Just what kind of
reproach was it? He was upset because whenever I dealt with a non-
Christian, I always assultied that he was acting in good faith. But the
contrary must be assumed, he maintained. Hadn't the New Law been
promulgated? Hadn't the Word of God been proclaimed in almost
every country on earth? Was grace lacking to anyone? When we spoke
to non-Christians, it was a duty to truth to presuppose— save for
exceptions (when, for example, a certain person was excused by that
exceedingly rare thing called "invincible ignorance")— that they were
not in good faith.

Such an attitude completely failed to take into account the de-
pendence of the human mind upon age-old traditions, cultural
environment, and, broadly speaking, the deadweight of history. I
don't believe there is anyone today who would accept the views of
my friend. Twenty years ago they seemed self-evident to a theologian
of high merit. They conformed to the line of behavior toward non-
Christians, to the pattern still accepted at that time (but not for very
long).

On the contrary, it is clear that if we should presuppose (because
all men are members of Christ, at least potentially) that the non-
Christian we are speaking to doubtless has grace and charity— since
we are in no position to judge the innermost heart— then we should
equally presuppose that he is in good faith. (It can happen, naturally,
that in certain cases one could have strong reasons for thinking that a
particular individual, Christian or non-Christian, is in bad faith. But
that will be the exception.)

THE LAW OF THE CROSS

We would be making a big mistake, as X said in a preceding section,
if we believed that men who are divided in their speculative convic-
tions are thereby prevented from reaching a practical agreement of

8o

JACQUES MARITAIN

thought in regard to the principles that govern action. But we would
be making a mistake at least as serious in the opposite direction if, on
the pretext of making this practical agreement more secure, we tried
to camouflage the irreducible oppositions that persist in the specula-
tive order between the parties involved, by lying as to what is and by
adapting the true to the false in order to make the dialogue more
smoothly cordial, and more deceptively fruitful.

The remark I made concerning practical agreement between men
divided in the speculative order should be driven home even more
forcefully (with pile drivers, if need be), when it comes to fostering
brotherly love among men who subscribe to different philosophical
or religious beliefs. This is the first condition of loyalty in the dialogue.

The more a Christian— let us say also this time, the more a Catholic
(for such a dialogue can and should also take place between Christians
who are doctrinally separated)— the more a Christian, or a Catholic,
gives an absolute primacy in his heart to a fully liberated brotherly
love, and, in dealing with non-Catholics or non-Christians, sees them
as they really are, members of Christ, at least potentially, the more
firmly he must maintain his positions in the doctrinal order (I don't
say he should brandish them at every turn), and must make clear the
differences which, in the realm of what is true or false, separate him
from these men he loves wholeheartedly. In acting thus, he will be
honoring them. To do otherwise would be to betray Truth, which is
above everything.

We have to grant that this is not always easy, and can make things
rather uncomfortable for him. Such is life. We must accept that.

I said once to Jean Cocteau: We must have a tough mind and a
tender heart , adding with a certain melancholy that the world is full
of dried-up hearts and flabby minds. Beware of flabby minds in the
ecumenical dialogue!

Nevertheless, it is not this which I would like to insist on today, but
rather the uncomfortable (more than uncomfortable) situation I was
discussing of those poor men in whose souls love and truth should be
served with an equal fidelity. (To put it more precisely, brotherly love
and the love of the One who is the Truth.) Misericordia et veritas
obviaverunt sibi . . .

There is no use getting excited. The new age we are entering will put
Catholics to a hard test. Doubtless, it will be for them the occasion of

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

Si

a very pure joy and exultation, because of the kind of epiphany of
brotherly love which it will permit. But the price will have to be paid.
There will likewise be an increase of suffering and heart rending
principally because of this misericordia and this veritas which desire
to meet and to embrace. Where? In heaven it is no problem. But in
man's world it is something else, and we are men.

To begin with, it is at the very core of brotherly love that inevitably
we suffer in our hearty because those non-Christians whom we love
like members of Christ, of the beloved Saviour, do not know Christ.
There can be and certainly is much of truth in their baggage. But they
do not know the Truth, the Truth that frees, and it is a great misfor-
tune for them, and one great joy less for heaven and for Jesus. They
continue to struggle with many chains, they still collide against many
barriers along their road; there are for them still many traps in the
shadows. Would we love them truly if we didn't suffer because of
what they lack? The more fraternal love grows, the more this suffer-
ing also grows. Clearly, if anyone delights in loving them, and receiv-
ing the gift of their friendship in return, but without experiencing any
of this suffering, there is something unreal about his love.

One can see here— this is only a small marginal gloss which has
slipped into my ever-friendly text by way of parenthesis— what a dis-
tance there is between the very pure joy and exualtation I mentioned
earlier and which have as their companion a faithful sorrow) and this
natural joy, very natural (and to which no sorrow, certainly, comes to
trouble the happy expansion), which is given us today to contemplate
in quite a few of our Christian brothers, entranced to be able at last
to rub their noses, all atremble with enthusiasm, with the noses of all
the sons of Adam.

Furthermore, and precisely because Christians and non-Christians
move on different levels with regard to truth, seeing things in differ-
ent lights more or less clouded by earthly vapors, it seems almost
inevitable that, to the extent that mutual friendship develops be-
tween them, we will see misunderstandings and suspicions arise. Will
the Christian's non-Christian friend understand the meaning and the
reason for that service to truth which his Christian friend maintains
more than ever in the doctrinal order, hardening the edge, if he must,
to avoid syncretism and confusion? Or will he take it for some incon-

82 JACQUES MARITAIN

ceivable arrogance or return to "fanaticism 7 '? The slightest blunder
will cost dear.

The Christian respects and cherishes the distinction between the
things that are Caesar's and those that are God's even when, acting on
his own and without committing the Church, he gives himself most
wholeheartedly to his temporal mission, and when the Church her-
self does everything in her power, while remaining within her own
sphere (which is that of the spiritual) to help the world overcome
the difficulties it faces in its own order. But will the non-Christian
(or even the non-Catholic) also understand the meaning and the
reason for this distinction, and not be scandalized because in certain
instances, the Christian (or the Catholic) must maintain at all costs
the autonomy of the spiritual in regard to the temporal, and refuse
to transform Christianity into a kind of theocratic agency charged
with assuring the well-being of the world, universal peace, pay raises,
and free room and board for all? How many explanations will have to
be given, which will surely not always be recognized as valid?

Finally, and most importantly, will it not be at the cost of a rather
painful overstretching in the very soul of the Christian, and of a vigil-
ance which can rarely permit any slackening, and a struggle against
often subtle temptations, and with what renunciations, and some-
times sacrifices, that can be assured, somehow or other, the double
and unique fidelity to which he is bound, on one hand, to truth in the
order of intelligence and theological faith, and, on the other, to broth-
erly love (which understands all things, said St. Paul, and forgives
all things), when it comes to our relations with our neighbor, and this
neighbor himself sets at naught what we most cherish? All the assist-
ance of grace will be needed. The love of the Cross will be needed. To
sum up, what I have been attempting to suggest is nothing but the
law of the cross , of that holy Cross which it is not in fashion to men-
tion today from pulpits. But the fashion in question, like all fashions,
is a thing of the moment. In any case, this law is there , whatever one
does or says.

Since I'm about to put my foot in it with all the frankness I obliged
myself to, and perhaps with an involuntary insolence (I certainly
hope not), why should I not speak the whole truth? The task which
the new age we are entering expects of Christians is so difficult that
they can not possibly accomplish it unless there are multiplied, in the

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE 83

very heart of and throughout the world, constellations of spiritual
energy composed of humble stars invisibly shining, each a contem-
plative soul given over to the life of prayer. In each of them (this is
the classic notion of “infused contemplation”) the gifts of the Holy
Spirit place the theological virtues in a state where they act in a higher
and more perfect way, and they elevate the whole activity, including
love itself, to a “supra-human mode.” Without contemplative love
and infused prayer, and tile participation of souls given over to them
in the redeeming Cross, and without the invisible support which they
bring to the work of all in the mystical Body, and to that strange
traffic (not lacking in irony) which Providence carries on here be-
low, the task demanded of Christians, of all Christians, would be too
heavy, and the great hope which is rising would be in vain. This hope
will not be in vain, for the humble stars I am speaking of have begun
secretly to glimmer; there are already more of them than one realizes
strewn across the world.

Ash Wednesday, February 23, 1966

s THE TRUE NEW FIRE
THE LIBERATION OF THE
INTELLIGENCE

In the previous chapter, I observed that the true new fire, the essen-
tial renewal, will be an inner renewal. I tried to sketch as best I could
(doubtless not too well) what this inward renewal implies in the
order of brotherly love, especially between Christians and non-
Christians. I would like to attempt a similar sketch concerning the
requests (and worries) of the human intellect, and what one may call
(not without some temerity on the part of an old peasant) the
affairs of the kingdom of God. This chapter and the next will be de-
voted to the first of these attempts.

PRELIMINARY NOTICE

The requests (and worries) of the intelligence— they are real
enough. Even in the mass media we find a hint of them. We are,
after all, animals endowed with reason: hence heirs to quite a few
worries and illusions, and a good many demands as well, both exacting
and inevitable. The renewals to which we are summoned by the great
chime of the Council depend above all on an inspiration and spiritual
elan awakened in the heaven of the soul. But such an inspiration and
such an clan necessarily entail and require a vast labor of reason, re-
newing its own perspectives and grasping more thoroughly the articu-
lations of the real. Only then can they recast our ordinary regime of
thought and behavior. For this, neither mystical experience, nor faith,
however desirable the first, and necessary the other, can suffice; both
demand to be accompanied by an indispensable renewal in the order
of intelligence. And if we stop to consider the present condition of

84

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

8 5

the intelligence, we will see (yes, we have been chained up longer and
more tightly than we like to think) that what such a renewal requires
is, first and foremost, a breaking of barriers and chains, a liberation:
liberation of the intelligence itself, and liberation in hearts of a love
which has been terribly repressed and which cries out from the
depths of the abyss— the love of Truth. I say “in hearts” because it is
a question of love, and I say “love”— love of that truth which is the
life of the intellect— because it ft desire or the will, whose primary act
is loving, which puts into operation all our powers, and hence also our
intellect.

Unless one loves the truth , one is not a man. And to love the truth
is to love it above everything, because we know that Truth is God
Himself.

Christ said to Pilate that he came into the world to bear witness to
the Truth.

It is by faith that we hold the supreme Truth. Yet faith itself calls,
be it in the unconscious, for a certain fermentation, a certain in-
quiry, a certain stirring and inner working of reason; and it normally
presupposes (I don't say in each of our individual histories, but in the
normal order of things considered in themselves) rational preliminar-
ies, such as the natural certitude of the existence of God : 1 a certitude
which is “natural” in the sense of spontaneous (then it is due to that
kind of instinct of reason which is common sense), and also in the
sense of acquired by the firm and compelling (because properly eluci-
dated) ways of reason when it knows unshakably. (And if the first
kind of certitude is valid, it is because it can flow into the second,
which is that of developed and fully adult reason.) Thus faith itself
demands to be completed by a certain intellectual grasp— inevitably
imperfect in regard to the term to be attained, but altogether firm in
regard to the structures of human knowledge— of the unfathomable
mystery of God and divine things. Credo ut intelligam. This is called
theology. And theology cannot take shape in us without the help of
that natural wisdom of which human reason is capable, whose name
is philosophy. In short, faith itself entails and requires a theology and

1 Many other truths of a purely rational order have also a necessary connection
with the data of faith and are presupposed or implied by them: for example, the
very axiom that man is made for truth, and also the existence of the sensible
world, the existence of free will; the spirituality and immortality of the human
•oul. Such a list could be prolonged.

86

JACQUES MARITAIN

a philosophy. Oh, I realize all this is quite regrettable because it is
difficult and fatiguing. It would be so much nicer to be a front-line
Christian going to Mass every Sunday (no longer, of course, because
he has to— which is now regarded as old-fashioned— but because he
knows it is the right thing to do) and then instructing himself peace-
fully by radio and television, and by reading picture magazines and a
few “demythizing" paperbacks.

I, too, feel regret— for meanly egotistical reasons (a philosopher's
life is not exactly a bed of roses). But that is the way it is; there's
nothing we can do about it. That's the way it is because man is what
he is. And in man there is not merely sex with all its nasty tricks, as
we might be tempted to believe (doubtless against the author's
wishes) on reading what a friendly colleague 2 calls “the kind of
basically sexual ontology" proposed by a much admired moralist with
little but his name to seduce me— what a beautiful name! In man
there is also the invisible intellect, which besets him much more
despotically.

But what sense is there in all this? Philosophy and theology— aren't
they but Chinese curios? Or should I say (for the sake of soft ecu-
menism , 3 perhaps afraid that the expression might offend the Chi-
nese) medievalist curios— which have become unthinkable for a man
of today? The word soul y it was recently observed, is suffering the
same fate; “most of the members of the 'intelligentsia' feel that this
word no longer has any meaning. ... As for the word spirituality ,
it no longer excites anything but derision on the part of serious
thinkers." 4

And the same can be said of the word truth . Well, it is immaterial
to me, because people who think in this way, no matter how numer-
ous, simply do not exist . When Villiers de l'lsle-Adam happened to
find himself in front of one of them (they were not lacking in his
time either), he walked up to him and, examining his face as closely as
possible and with the greatest of care, said, “I'm trying my best, I
look at you— I dont see you."

Besides, there is in all this a strange error of fact. The need for these

2 Dr. Marcel Eck, in an open letter to the author of Myst&re humain de la la
Sexualiti. [The author in question is abb6 Oraison — Translator's addition.]

* Do I need to point out that I am not speaking of true ecumenism, which is
certainly not soft?

4 Stanislas Fumet, in an interview published by La Table Ronde f March, 1966.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

8?

medieval curios, repressed as it may be, is actually enormous in
today’s world. The aberrant forms to which such a need resorts for its
gratification (just think of the large circulation of the review, Planete)
are themselves proof of it. And speaking seriously, those who have a
genuine experience of today's youth know that, as soon as, maybe in
passing, the slightest spark gives them an opportunity to release what
smoulders within their mind, then a thirst for philosophical knowl-
edge, and perhaps even mofe,Tor the theological knowledge, manifests
itself in them. I am an old hermit, but I know many young people,
and I am also acquainted with a number of intelligent professors,
who are capable of transmitting the spark— and who have told me
what subjects arouse the keenest interest among their students, and
make the latter ask the most anxious questions.

But I am not forgetting that, in this book, it is mainly Christians I
am talking to. It is with the Gospel, then, that we should properly
begin.

THE TRUTH

What do the apostles tell us?

The Spirit is the Truth, St. John says . 5 And again:

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and
from Jesus Christ the Father s Son, cV dXyOe la akawy, in truth and

Zove.®

No greater joy can I hare than this, to hear that my children follow
the truth*

So we ought to support such men, that we may be fellow workers in
the Truth. 8

We are of the Truth ®

And Paul: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness hold
truth captive of injustice . 10

6 .

• llohn 3:19.
10 Rom. 1 : 10.

88

JACQUES MAR I T A I N

Those who are to perish , because they did not receive the love of
the Truth which would have saved them . 11

All shall be condemned who did not believe in the Truth 12

God our Savior r who desires all men to be saved and to come to the
knowledge of the Truth 13

Charity takes its joy in the truths (A joy in which it is in com-
munion With the truth , <rvvx^P e 1 T V aXrjOela.)

Put on the new man , created after the likeness of God in right-
eousness and the holiness of Truth 15

And James: Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of
truth 16

And what does Jesus tell us? I am the Way , and the Truth , and the
Life 17

For this I was born , and for this I have come into the world , to bear
witness to the Truth . Everyone who is of the Truth hears my voice 18

God is Spirit , and those who worship him must worship in spirit
and truth 19

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth . 20

The Spirit of Truth , who proceeds from the Father 21

When he comes , the Spirit of Truth will teach you all the truth 22

Father, sanctify them in the Truth; thy word is Truth . . . And
for their sake I sanctify myself , that they also may be sanctified in the
Truth 23

If you abide in my word , you will truly be my disciples , and you will
know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free 24

11 2 Thessal. 2:10.

12 Ibid., 2:12.

13 1 Tim. 2:4.

14 1 Cor. 13:6.

15 Ephes. 4:24.

16 James 1:18.

17 John 14:6.

18 Ibid., 18:37.

19 Ibid., 4:24.

20 Ibid., 14:17.

21 Ibid., 15:26.

22 Ibid., 16:13.

23 Ibid., 17:17, 19.

24 Ibid., 8:32. Here are a good many citations drawn from the fourth Gospel.
There is no reason to be surprised at the fact, since the Synoptics have gathered
together, to transmit them in writing (as Luke clearly suggests) the logia of Jesus

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

3 9

And what do we read in the infinitely venerable Prologue to the
fourth Gospel? He [the Word] was the True light, that enlightens
every man coming into the world. 2 *

And the Word became flesh, and he dwelt among us, and we have
beheld his glory , glory which comes from the Father to the only Son,
full of grace and truth 26

For the Law was given through Moses; but Grace and Truth came
through Jesus ChrisL 27 ' ■

The subsistent Truth which is God, and which Christ came to re-
veal, and the truth which is a participation in it here below— and in
which we should follow, as St. John says, 28 and which makes us true
in love (E plies., 4, 5)— and in which charity rejoices, 29 — we see what
a place truth holds in the Gospel.

It is impossible for a Christian to be a relativist. 80 Those who make
the attempt have no chance of succeeding. Let them be pardoned,
after all. There is an even better excuse than "invincible ignorance/'
and that is what Baudelaire called "la betise au front de taureau,” bull-
headed stupidity.

But the texts we have just been reading call for more appropriate
commentary. The truth of Faith is the infinitely transcendent truth of
the mystery of God. And, nevertheless, this infinitely transcendent
truth, God fias willed that it be expressed (and here comes the
prophets of Israel, the teaching of Christ, and the definitions of the
Church) in human concepts and words. This is characteristic of
the Judeo-Christian revelation. Revelation is not unformulatable; it is
formed. It is so because the Second Person of the Trinity is the Word,

and the other recollections engraved in the memory of the disciples and the very
earliest Christian community, whereas the fourth Gospel, as emerges clearly from
its tone and style, is the work of a man bringing his absolutely personal witness
(there were reasons for John’s having been the preferred disciple) who had seized
up and retained many deeper and more precious traits on which the common
attention had not been fixed. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the epistles of
Paul and James sound, on the question we are dealing with here, in a manner
exactly similar.

26 John 1 19.

26 Ibid., 1:14.

2 * Ibid., 1:17.

28 Cf. above (n. 7), 3 John 4.

29 Cf. above (n. 14), 1 Cor. 1 3:6.

90 Unless he is a physicist. I am obviously not talking here of relativist physics
or Ein^teimaxi relativity.

9 °

JACQUES MARITAIN

and because the Word was made flesh. The concepts and words that
transmit revelation to us are at once true (they make what is hidden
in God actually known to us) and essentially mysterious (in aenig-
mate : they remain disproportionate to the Reality which they attain
without either circumscribing or comprehending it).

That is what teaches a philosopher to respect human intelligence,
the concepts and the other instruments it fashions in order to lay hold
of things, and of which the prophets of Israel and He whom they
were announcing have made use of to open doors against which phil-
osophers bump their noses. It is in the course of meditating on this
that, once upon a time, a fervent Bergsonian began to perceive the
weakness of that critique of the concept upon which Bergson laid so
much stress, and which, after all, he himself belied in writing his great
books.

And it is in meditating on this, that the Christian blesses the ob-
scurity of Faith, through which the absolute Truth, which is seen only
in glory, enters already, in this poor earthly life, into companionship
with him. For it is in this holy obscurity that he is able to worship in
spirit and in truth.

So much for my first remark. The second is brought to my mind
with respect to the second epistle of St. John, where the apostle calls
down on us grace, mercy, and peace in truth and charity. Just how
do truth and charity come to terms with one another? In everyday
practice this problem creates quite a few difficulties for us, poor
fellows that we are, and likewise, as I noted in the previous chapter, no
small inner pains. Yet in principle the agreement in question is
perfectly normal . 31

Charity has to do with persons; truth, with ideas and with reality
attained through them. Perfect charity toward our neighbor and
complete fidelity to the truth are not only compatible; they call for
one another.

In the fraternal dialogue, the deeper love is, the more each one
feels bound to declare, without diminution or lenitive salve what he
holds to be true (otherwise he would wrong, not only truth as he sees
it, but also the spiritual dignity of his neighbor).

And the more freely I affirm what I hold as true, the more I should

31 See my essays, “Qui est mon prochain?” in Principes d’une politique hu *
maniste, and “Tol6rance et Vdrite” in Le Philosophe dans la cite.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

9 1

love whoever denies it— I don’t have toward my neighbor the toler-
ance-demanded by brotherly love unless his right to exist, to seek
truth, and to express it according to his lights, and never to act or
speak against his conscience is recognized and respected by me at the
very instant when this pig-headed neighbor— always worthy of love, as
dense as he may seem— takes sides against the very truths which are
dearest to me.

If I truly love my ‘neighbor, it will of course (I have already said as
much) be painful to me to see him deprived of the truth I happen to
know. For, all things considered, it is truth I must love above every-
thing, while at the same time loving my neighbor as myself. If my
neighbor is in error, it is a pity for him, and for truth, too. How to es-
cape suffering from this? That is part of the inherent delight of the
fraternal dialogue. On the other hand, the latter would completely
degenerate if the fear of displeasing my brother got the better of my
duty to declare the truth. (To do so, moreover, will not grieve too
much my dear fellow being if I am not too stupid about it, and if I
really have in my heart the feelings I owe to him.)

Let us beware of those brotherly dialogues in which everyone is in
raptures while listening to the heresies, blasphemies, stuff and non-
sense of the other. They are not brotherly at all. It has never been
recommended to confuse “loving” with “seeking to please.” Saltavit
et placuit, she gamboled and frolicked and captivated them all.
Salome pleased Herod’s guests; I can hardly believe she was burning
with love for them. As for poor John the Baptist (who did not dia-
logue in his prison, except with his Master), she certainly did not
envelop him in her love.

My third remark will have to do with efficacy and truth. In Chapter
3 I spoke at some length about the world and the contrasting mean-
ings of this word. The Church knows the worth, dignity and beauty
of the world which God has made; she wants its good— its temporal as
well as its spiritual good. She embraces it in the divine agape she has
received from on high. She strives with all her heart to help it advance
in the line of its earthly progress, toward its natural ends and toward
better and higher conditions for mankind; she places at its disposal
the treasures of light and compassion which have been confided to
her. But she is not in the service of the world. She keeps herself from
conforming to its lusts, its prejudices, or its passing fancies. In this

92 JACQUES MARITAIN

sense, old Chesterton was right in saying: "The Catholic Church is
the only thing which spares man the degrading slavery of being a child
of his times.” And with incomparably greater authority, it was also
said, "Do not be conformed to this world.” 32 It has always been
obvious, from the way in which the "world” St. Paul was speaking
about shifts for itself, that its supreme norm is efficacy— in other
words, success. The supreme norm for the Church is truth.

The supreme norm which the "world” obeys, the supreme law of
efficacy, threatens to impose itself with tyranny more demanding than
ever in the technocratic civilization we are entering today. That is why
men will have such desperate need of the witness which the Church
renders to the absolute primacy of truth.

There is much one could say on the subject of efficacy. In truth,
nothing in nature, especially in the living being, and even more so in
the human being, is inefficacious. Neither idleness, nor even laziness,
nor rest are inefficacious, except when they take place at the wrong
moment. Ancient Chinese wisdom knew the value of empty spaces in
music and design as well as in the art of living. Above all, there are
different levels of efficacy; I say this in passing, perhaps I will get a
chance to come back to this. The fact is that whatever is meant only
for efficacy, a limitless efficacy, is precisely what is least really effica-
cious (because nature and life are a hidden order, not a mere un-
leashing of force), whereas what seems least efficacious (if it belongs
to an order superior to that of activities bound to matter) is what
most possesses genuine efficacy.

But the efficacy I am discussing here pertains to the energies man
deploys and uses in the order proper to his nature as an animal en-
dowed with reason, thanks to his brawn and especially to his brain.
To neglect such efficacy would be a childish nonsense we needn't fear
the world will be guilty of. Nor does the Church fall into such non-
sense. That is why, at each great moment of her history, she renews
not merely her means of action, but her awareness of the vital sources
on which they depend (she takes her time with it; Aristotle remarked
that the magnanimous move at a slow step). Today the Church is at
one of these great moments of renewal. And she knows perfectly well
the risks involved. (Have no fear, she will surmount them.)

Can we say as much for a number of her clerics and faithful? It is

32 Rom. 12:2.

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toward them that I now turn my old hermit's gaze, not sorry more-
over, do put aside for a moment the world and its false pretenses— but
am I actually putting them aside that much? That's what bothers
me. Nevertheless, the viewpoint I would now like to adopt is no
longer that of the assistance and cooperation which Christianity
brings to the world and the temporal order from on high, but rather
what Christianity is confronted with in the spiritual order itself,
which is its own proper" onrder. "

There is, nowadays, among a good many Christians and even,
without their clearly realizing it perhaps, among an alarming number
of priests and consecrated people (it is these clerics, above all, whom
I have in mind), a marked tendency to give efficacy primacy over
truth. What does it matter if the means one uses set the mind on a
wrong course, ask group techniques and group psychology 83 to do
better than the theological virtues, the gregarious instinct to do better
than the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the flowering ( epanouissement ) of
nature to do better than humility, the engagements or commitments
(preferably made in common) to replace the “egocentric" search for
intimacy with God, the joy of sharing in the world's labors to replace
the search for the perfection of charity and for the love of the cross,
mass action to take the place of that “go into your chamber and shut
the door and pray to your Father who dwells in secret /' 34 which
Jesus Christ had prescribed— for another age, was it?— community
celebrations to cast aside the search for silence and solitude— the lat-
est fables and quackeries to give a little vitality to the catechism— and,
above all, the generous expenditure of self in external works and in an
incessant dialogue with everybody to free us from any attempt at
intellectual concentration? What does it matter, once these means are
supposedly dynamic— that's the only thing that counts— and serve
efficaciously to gather men together in the fold of the Good Shepherd?

Precisely here lies the flagrant absurdity, since the Good Shepherd
is precisely Truth itself; and since the means are nothing unless they
are proportioned to the end— that is, in the present case, unless they

ss Mind you, I have nothing against group psychology or the flowering of nature,
nor against commitments, the joy of sharing in the world's labors, mass action,
community celebrations or dialogue. I am speaking of the use (for which these
things are in no way intended) which certain people, not too rare at this stage,
w kh to make them serve.

Matt. 6:6.

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JACQUES M ARITAIN

are means of truth; and since, in the domain of the kingdom of God,
it is truth which is the source and measure of efficacy itself.

Actually, in so far as the tendency I have pointed out prevails, the
souls of men are being exposed to a fine case of inner disintegration,
and there is a risk of their becoming spiritual cripples who cannot
easily be cured.

There, carried to its extreme limit, you see the troubled and un-
happy “faith” of pure fideism, and the supernatural Truth (or what's
left of it) lying in poor people like a stone at the bottom of a pond,
but no longer vitally received by a living being. In their intellect,
every link with this stranger has been severed. Their dismasted reason,
robbed of the inner formations and structures which it naturally de-
mands, floats adrift in religious ignorance, and (when they are men
whose cultural level would have normally required a few certitudes,
however elementary, in the matter of knowledge) in a total skepti-
cism or theological and philosophical indifferentism.

Who's talking about efficacy! The end result would be the defec-
tion of a great multitude. The day when efficacy would prevail over
truth will never come for the Church, for then the gates of hell would
have prevailed against her.

A FEW WORDS ON THE CAPACITY OF HUMAN REASON

It is normal that after all this, I should feel called upon to say a few
words concerning the capacity of human reason.

How, in fact, poor imbeciles that we are, could we know through
faith and with full certitude the supernaturally revealed Truth to
which man's mind is not proportioned, if we were not able to know
with full certitude the truths of a rational order to which man's mind
is proportioned? I have in mind philosophic truths, which are purely
rational— let us understand this “purely” in contradistinction to what
lies above reason, but of course not to what lies below it (for all
knowledge naturally acquired by man proceeds from sense experi-
ence, and, if there is an insane asylum among the pure spirits of
heaven, it is only there that we can see Kant's Pure Reason in opera-
tion). I also have in mind theological truths, which are rational but
whose object is superior to reason, and which proceed from the light

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of faith, but not without the theologian's having to use, in their serv-
ice, philosophic truths which emerge from the experience of the
senses through the agency of the intellect.

Grace perfects nature and does not destroy it. It is essential for man
to aspire to truth, and he has the capacity to reach it by his own
powers— even if it be in stumbling and zigzagging along the way, a
way which is endless— in the things which depend on sense experience
or to which such experience gives us indirect access. So much for
philosophy and the swarming of sciences. Man also has the capacity—
and here we are speaking of theology— to gain a still imperfect but
genuine and authentic knowledge of divine things when his natural
forces work in the light of faith, which quickens them and raises
them above their ordinary level. This is my point Number 1. (Please
excuse me for appearing to give a lecture. It's certainly not my
intention.)

Let us move on to point Number 2. Since there are truths of a
rational order in regard to which man's understanding can acquire
certitude, does it not follow that an organic network of fundamental
truths— in other words, a doctrine (why, certainly, so much the
worse for the reigning prejudices), a doctrine which is essentially
grounded in truth , 35 is possible (in the philosophical order, and
likewise, when it is a question of acquiring in a rational way some
understanding of the mystery revealed, in the theological order)?
One can regard the thing as improbable, but that is not the point.
The point is to know whether, of its nature, it is possible.

The affirmative answer compels recognition, if one is not too much
afraid of professors. I know very well that all present-day philosophers
(almost all, to be more precise) are speaking in the opposite way. But
I don't care. Besides, they are not philosophers, as I will soon have
occasions to explain.

We have surely to admit that— since man is made for truth— a doc-
trine essentially grounded in truth must be possible for our mind on
condition, however (and this goes further than one thinks), that it
not be the work of a single man (a thousand times too weak to

35 Every doctrine, even the most erroneous, is based on some truth. I call essen-
tiariy grounded in truth a doctrine grounded in truth in its essential or fundamental
structure.

96 JACQUES M ARITAIN

manage properly, in three or four decades, so enormous, and so
enormously risky a business), but that it rely, with a proper respect for
common sense and common intelligence, on the efforts of the human
mind from the most remote times, and embrace the labor of genera-
tions of thinkers with contrasting views— all of this being one day
brought together and unified by one or several men of genius (sup-
posing they unexpectedly come along among the contingencies of
history) .

My present intention is not to quarrel with the idea, so widespread
in today's world, that the pluralism of philosophic doctrines is some-
thing normal de hire. It is rather to dispel a misunderstanding and to
show that, contrary to what is often imagined, what I have just
affirmed, namely that a doctrine essentially grounded in truth is
possible , can only be understood correctly if we recognize at the same
time the pluralism of philosophic doctrines, I don't say as normal
de iure , but as bound to happen or normal de facto : by reason of the
conditions under which human subjectivity is working among phil-
osophers.

On the one hand, it is, to be sure, nonsense to imagine that a
philosophic doctrine grounded in truth would by the same token be,
or pretend to be, a finished or perfect doctrine, nay more, that it
would contain or claim to contain, all ready-made, the answers to all
the questions which will arise in the course of time. Doubtless one can
say (it is a suitable abbreviation— flattering, certainly, to the partisans
of this possible doctrine; exasperating to the rest) that a doctrine es-
sentially grounded in truth is a “true" doctrine. But we must quickly
remove all risk of misunderstanding. What do the words “a true phi-
losophy" or “a true theology" mean? They signify that since its
principles are true, and ordered in a manner which conforms to the
real, such a (possible) philosophy or such a (possible) theology is
thus equipped to advance from age to age (if those who profess it are
not too lazy or complacent) toward a greater measure of truth. But
there are an infinity of truths that this possible true doctrine has not
yet attained; and, such as it presents itself at a given time, it can itself
admit of a number of accidental errors.

Assuming it exists, it is not enough to say that it is never finished
and should always progress. In order to free itself from the limitations

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inherent in the mentality of a given cultural epoch, such a doctrine
necessarily implies a perpetual process of self-remoulding, as is the
case with living organisms. It has a duty to understand intelligently
the various systems which develop from one age to another in opposi-
tion to it, to discover their generative intuition, and to rescue the
truths which they hold captive. Now, given the conditions (hardly
splendid, it goes without saying) in which human subjectivity is at
work, it is certainly -to 1)e “feared that the adherents of this possible
doctrine grounded in truth will more or less neglect the duty I have
just spoken of, and likewise the aforementioned process of self-
remoulding.

On the other hand— given always the famous conditions in which
human subjectivity is at work— it is inevitable that in every epoch a
certain number of minds, devoted primarily to research, and fasci-
nated by this or that particular truth they have discovered (with,
ordinarily, the fresh supply of some error), will give rise to other
systems which clash more or less violently with the admittedly possi-
ble doctrine grounded in truth and which will succeed each other
from age to age.

The minds I am speaking of will be burned out by the particular
truth they have discovered, and which it will be up to the possible
doctrine grounded in truth to rescue and deliver in a coherent uni-
verse of thought. Yet they will have contributed effectively, at times
splendidly (but then beware of the after-effects of their prestige) to
the progress of philosophy.

Tlius, as I just indicated, one sees how to recognize the possibility
of a doctrine essentially grounded in truth, but which advances
slowly (it is, by hypothesis, a common work, which embraces in its
preparation a human experience that goes back to remotest times,
and is called upon, by the same token— once formed, and supposing
all goes well— to grow ceaselessly through some common effort), to
recognize, I say, the possibility of such a doctrine essentially grounded
in truth is, at the same time, to recognize as inevitable or normal de
facto (by reason of the human subject) the existence of other doc-
trines which— each one an individual work, and, as such, ephemeral,
though a Descartes or a Hegel was able to influence several centuries—

93 JACQUES MARITAIN

will mark, in regard to a certain aspect of the immense unknown, a
more rapid advance, yet paid for at great cost. 36

There is obviously a third point, which is no longer concerned with
the possibility of a doctrine (philosophical or theological) grounded
in truth, but (that is when they will attack me) with the existence of
such a doctrine. Is the existence of such a doctrine probable? Cer-
tainly not, given the preceding considerations. But the improbable
sometimes happens. I am saving this third part for the next chapter.

PHILOSOPHY AND IDEOSOPHY

I intend to speak now in a way that will perhaps seem a trifle I

arrogant. But when it comes to absolutely essential matters that have I

been ignored by an intellectually degraded epoch, and when one is 1
dealing with the great idols of the day (venerated, moreover, by a
great many thinkers, some of whom are first class and deserve esteem
and respect, even admiration— a qualified admiration), it is one’s duty
toward what is highest in the world to use the knife (and there is no
point in being too gentle). Now that I have pronounced this mod-
est preamble, I will resume my natural tone, and the course of my
reflections.

My few words on the capacity of reason have taken longer than I
had wanted them to. I will now ask those who do me the honor of
glancing at these pages to kindly re-read the Gospel texts I collected j
earlier on the subject of Truth.

The truth of which these texts speak, and which sets us free, does
it push us back into the inner prison where we supposedly would be
confined in company with the ideas of our mind? In fact, the truth of
divine revelation throws us to the heart of He who is— and of what is , 1

with an absolute violence which pulverizes any claim to make our
mind the rule of what it knows, or to make what it knows a product
of its own innate forms organizing phenomena (or indeed, as is ,

s® In the same way we understand how those who see in the development of
philosophy only a succession of individual works will be brought to consider as
necessary de iure (as if it were demanded by the object itself) a doctrinal pluralism
which is doubtless indeed normal (from the point of view of the philosophizing
subject, and given the human condition), but only normal de facto, or in point of
fact inevitable.

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99

readily believed in our days, simply a phenomenon which makes sense
for us through our experience of ourselves). The Bible and the
Gospel radically exclude any kind of idealism in the philosophic sense
of the word. I noted that in my first chapter.

The Almighty God who created the world, and whose voice Moses
heard, was he owing his existence and his glory to the mind that knew
him? And the people this God chose for himself, and the land to
which he led them, with itt vines, its olive trees and its corn— were all
these men and all these things which the hand can touch and the eye
see, objects which have shape or consistency only in dependence of
the mind that knows them? And the Word which descended to take
flesh and human nature in a virgin of Israel, does the Gospel ask us to
believe in this Word, and the flesh and human nature it made its own,
as in mere ideas of our mind? And Christ preaching along the roads,
and the enemies through whose midst he passed, and the mountain
from which they sought to hurl him, and the children he blessed, and
the lilies of the field he admired, and the sins which he took upon
himself, and the love with which he loves us, is all this grasped by our
intellect as being, to say, like Schopenhauer, “my representation"?
And when Jesus teaches his disciples and says to them, for example,
“I and the Father are one", 37 or “when the Paraclete comes, whom
I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds
from the Father, he will bear witness to me," 88 do the terms of these
propositions come from a priori synthetic judgments subsuming the
data of experience (no, that won’t do), or do they express an Idea of
Reason in which a postulate of practical Reason obliges us to believe?
(That won’t do either.) In what drawer of the Critique, then, must
we put the terms of the assertions uttered by the Lord? Or should we
see in the thinking-master who still reigns over the world of profes-
sors, what he in fact was: an elderly meditative clockmaker laboriously
tracing, in his head and on paper, the outline of the mechanisms of a
transcendental clock destined to make the stars move in their courses?

The Judeo-Cliristian revelation is the strongest, the most insolently
self-assured testimony rendered to the reality in itself of being— the
being of things, and Being subsisting by itself— I say being dwelling in
the glory of existence in total independence of the mind that knows

87 John 10:30.

88 John 15:26.

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JACQUES M ARITAIN

it. Christianity professes with a tranquil impudence what in the
philosophical vocabulary is known as realism. I said previously that a
Christian can not be a relativist. One must say, and this goes much
further, that a Christian can not be an idealist.

Nor can a philosopher be an idealist. I appear to be voicing an
enormity, but it is an axiomatic truth I am stating. Of course I am not
challenging the great thinkers of India, they lived in a mental regime
where religion, rite, mystique and metaphysics were all mixed to-
gether. I am not thinking of Plato either, for whom reality in itself had
passed into the eternal Ideas (this was but a displacement, though a
formidable one, of the life-center of philosophy, and a great intuition
wrongly conceptualized). To him philosophy owes the flash of light-
ning which gave birth to it, and the propensity to go astray from
which it might have died. It is on Descartes, the father of modern
idealism, that I have designs, and on the whole series of his heirs,
who, while each of them subjected this system to some mutation,
have followed an evolutive curve of an irresistible internal logic.

All these men begin with thought alone, and there they remain,
whether they deny the reality of things and of the world (Descartes
still believed in it, but on account of a wave of the magic wand by the
God of the cogito ), or whether, in some way or another, they resorb
this reality into thought. What does this mean? They impugn from
the outset that very fact in which thought gets firmness and consis-
tency, and without which it is a mere dream — I mean the reality to
be known and understood, which is here , seen, touched, seized by the
senses, and with which an intellect which belongs to a man, not to an
angel, has directly to deal: the reality about which and starting with
which a philosopher is born to question himself: if he misses the start
he is nothing. They impugn the absolutely basic foundation of philo-
sophic knowledge and philosophical research. They are like a logician
who would deny reason, a mathematician who would deny unity and
duality, a biologist who would deny life. From the moment they set
out, they have turned their back on philosophic knowledge and
philosophical research. They are not philosophers.

In saying this, I certainly don't mean that a philosopher should dis-
miss them, or consider them charletans. Their contribution to the
history of thought has been immense. They have rendered consider-

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101

able services to philosophy. They have obliged philosophers to be-
come more clearly aware of the care they should devote to the theory
of knowledge and the critical examination of its problems, it is im-
portant to read and study them with the greatest of care, an eager
interest in the way their minds work, a vivid curiosity concerning
their enigmatic ways of approach, and an odd but almost tender
sympathy for their research. I have spent a good deal of time absorb-
ing what they wrote. Desea rtes'was an enemy of whom I was singu-
larly fond. I was charmed by Berkeley; I narrowly missed being won
over by Spinoza (at twenty I didn't know how much he depended on
Descartes). I have admired the implacable bitterness of Hume and
the slightly too facile genius of Leibniz. I gave extensive lectures on
Kant which taught me a good deal. Auguste Comte has given me
some rather uncharitable joys for which I am always grateful. I cannot
say as much for Hegel, even though I have passed long hours in his
company and though he was the greatest genius among them— and
the maddest, for he was certain of having brought himself and the
Spirit to the pinnacle of wisdom. And then there was Bergson, who,
contrary to the others, really was a philosopher and holds no place in
the line of descent; he endeavored to break it. (As I wish to be
polite, I would rather say nothing about the logical positivists, who
hold a nice place in the line.) After Bergson, everybody readily re-
entered the Cartesian lineage, at the thin end of it: with Husserl first,
of whom I will speak soon, and for whom, whatever the catastrophe
he caused, I have a great intellectual respect. I also have intellectual
respect for some of those who take after him, Heidegger in particular,
and, among my countrymen, men like Paul Ricoeur (who, however, I
am still far from trusting) and Mircea Eliade (a great explorer but one
who does not want to be a guide, thank goodness). I have none for
Jean-Paul Sartre, who seems to me too artful, and who besides (and
here he pleases me) would be quite sorry to find himself respected.
(Yet I like to imagine him elected to the A cademie Frangaise, an
honor wLich he certainly deserves.) But he has offered a testimony we
would be quite wrong to neglect.

Of all the thinkers— and great thinkers— w'hose lineage has its origin
in Descartes, l contest neither the exceptional intelligence, nor the
importance, nor the worth, nor, at times, the genius. In regard to

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them I challenge only one thing, but that I challenge with might
and main, and with the certainty of being right: namely, their right
to the name of philosopher (except, of course, for Bergson, and
perhaps also Blondel). In dealing with those children of Descartes we
must sweep away this name with the back of our hand. They are not
philosophers; they are ideosophers : that is the only name which fits
and by which it is proper to call them. It is in no way pejorative of
itself, it merely designates another way of research and thought than
the philosophic one.

I beg my readers not to take what I have just said for the whim of a
crazy old man. I am old but not crazy, and never have I spoken more
seriously. Exactness of vocabulary is always important; in the present
case it is of essential importance. Thinkers who from the outset have
placed themselves outside the field of philosophic knowledge and
research are not philosophers. A lineage of idealist origin, which from
mutation to mutation more and more radically impugns extra-mental
reality and the absolutely primary foundation of philosophic knowl-
edge, could not possibly be called a philosophic lineage. Whoever is
careful to be precise in his language should consider it an ideosophic
lineage. (We can note, parenthetically, that at the present time the
very thinkers whom current language, with little concern for pre-
cision, still calls philosophers, do not seem overly anxious to claim the
name. They value much more the name phenomenologist. And with a
melancholy loyalty which does them honor, a number of them would
prefer, it seems, merely to be a channel for the stream of research, a
vanishing instant in its ever changing self-awareness. Their misfortune
is not to have seen that thought is not the harlot of time . . .)

☆

Once the clarification to which I have just resorted has been ef-
fected in our ideas and vocabulary, and once we have recognized the
fact that there is no properly philosophic knowledge or research with-
out a realist conception of knowledge, we can ask ourselves how the
situation of philosophy looks in this second half of the twentieth
century.

The ideosophers being therefore left aside for a moment, we then
realize, not without something of a shock, that we are confronted

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10 3

today with only two doctrines— yes (a thousand pardons), they arc
doctrines, and rather firmly planted ones (though far from cherishing
one another) —which are, properly speaking, philosophic doctrines.
For, while a good many different kinds of philosophic realism are
surely conceivable in theory, in point of fact there are at present only
two: Marxist realism and Christian realism. In other words, on the
one hand there is Marxist philosophy, and on the other Christian
philosophy, when it.does not fell short of the demands created by the
coupling of these two words, nor give love-tokens to idealism or
ideosophy. It is fairly well known that there is a Christian philosophy
which meets these requirements, and is not faring too badly, in spite
of the wishes and predictions of a sizable number of clerics.

Here is a meeting point between Christianity and Marxism that
M. Garaudy would have been well advised to take note of . 39 A pity
his attention was not drawn to it by the authors he consulted before
offering us that pious humanization of an old faith, pretty well de-
mythized and at last converted to the hopes of the earth, which he
terms "‘the fundamental” in Christians. One must praise the fidelity
with which, in striving to depict this ancient faith, he has followed
the directions furnished him by his informants, but still, when one
undertakes to “dialogue” with Christianity, it is unfair not to take as
one's interlocutor Christianity as it is, whatever the incorrigible alien-
ations and superstitions one deems have debased it.

Whatever the case with M. Garaudy's book, for my part I wish to

S9 If I have read M. Garaudy correctly, I saw the name of Aquinas appear only
once in his book (Un M arxiste s’adresse au Concile , p. 93), and it seems clear, in
the light of this passage, that he is less interested in the basic principles of the
philosophy of St. Thomas than in the latter's opinion of serfdom. Feudal society
was very far (a little further than ours) from being a fully humanized society,
which doesn’t mean that it had to be condemned in the name of absolute justice,
or that moral theology should have regarded the lord who owned seifs as being in
a state of sin. One wonders that an author who has (as one expects of an eminent
Marxist) a sense of history (and a healthy aversion to “moralizing”) did not see
this immediately, and could consider that a theologian of the thirteenth century,
in regarding the feudal regime as a de facto situation sufficiently justified by history*,
thereby demonstrated an unfortunate resignation to evil. There are, alas, more
conclusive signs of the indifference so long demonstrated by the Christian world in
the face of social injustice.

It is likewise somewhat astonishing that, after having himself noted that St.
Thomas lived at the time of serfdom, M. Garaudy, in the fragments he extracted
from two articles of the Summa, translated Mryus not as “serf, which would have
been normal, but as “slave.”

104 JACQUES M ARITAIN

call attention to the meeting point. For to be a philosophic doctrine,
properly speaking, is no small thing, and we have to do justice to
Marxism by recognizing that such is the case.

Thereafter we must also be quick to recognize that the meeting
point is a point of irreducible disagreement. For, from the very first,
Marxist philosophy identifies extra-mental reality and matter , 40 thus
making of the spiritual a superstructure or “reflection” of matter in
dialectical motion and perpetual evolutive change, and excluding the
slightest possibility of admitting or even conceiving the autonomy of
the spiritual and the liberty which is proper to it (as they see it, the
spiritual is no doubt in interaction with the substructure, but as
though begotten by it and determined by it at every instant) .

Moreover, when we think of this matter in dialectical motion , 41
and which refuses every “substance” or “nature” of permanent consti-
tution, we cannot help finding Marxist realism itself, however resolute
it may be otherwise, nonetheless rather suspect. The famous “turning
upside down” proclaimed by Engels itself invites us to do so. Hegel
turned upside dowti, and put back on his feet, is still Hegel. . .

But this is not the place to examine Marxist philosophy. (I have
done that elsewhere.) As for Thomistic philosophy, its turn will
come in the next chapter. It is of the liberation of philosophic eros
that I would like now to speak.

THE LIBERATION OF PHILOSOPHIC EROS

We are confronted today with only two philosophies. But there
exists in man a philosophic eros and a nostalgia for philosophy. And
since the theme of these last chapters is the inner renewals which the
great historic springtide, the new Renaissance announced and ushered
in by the Council primarily calls for, it is clear that with respect to

40 “The notion of matter/' wrote Lenin in Materialism and Empiriocriticism,
“from the point of view of the theory of language, signifies absolutely nothing but
the objective reality whose existence is independent of human consciousness and
is reflected by the latter." On Marxism, cf. our recent work Moral Philosophy
(Chap. X, “Marx and His School"), and also True Humanism.

41 In reflecting also on what M. Garaudy (op. cit ., p. 6o) calls the “Faustian
primacy of action in Marx" and the practical criterion considered as “criterion of
truth." In the eyes of this philosophy, the real is not before actings it acts in order
to be, which is rather suggestive of very ancient mythologies.

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10 5

the demands and worries of intelligence it is toward this philosophic
eros present in the depths of man that we have first to turn.

This poor philosophic eros is today in a rather bad condition, ly-
ing bound and gagged at the bottom of the soul. And what is worse,
it is being cheated. It stirs in its jail, it yearns for liberation. Such a
liberation implies two operations. The first of these, which I will
discuss at length, answers to- the need for liberating philosophic eros
from every idealist or ideosophic shackle. In saying this, I turn to the
man who, in our times, has played a role analogous to Descartes' in
the seventeenth century, namely Husserl.

Yet in order to shed a little light on the subject, we must first
briefly recall just where the mystery of knowing lies. As I have written
elsewhere , 42 thought need not go out of itself to reach the extra-
mental thing. This extra-mental thing, a being for itself posited “out-
side of thought," that is to say, fully independent of the act of
thinking— thought itself renders it existing within thought, posited for
it and integrated with its own act, so that henceforth thought and
being exist within thought in one and the same supra-subjectivc
existence. Thus, it is in thought itself that extra-mental being is
reached, in the concept itself that the real is touched and handled;
it is there, within thought itself, that the real is seized, and devoured,
because the very glory of thought's immateriality lies in not being a
thing in space external to some other spatial thing, but indeed a life
superior to the whole order of spatiality, which, without going out of
itself, perfects itself by what is not itself— that intelligible real whose
fertile substance its own activity takes out from the senses, after the
senses have first drawn it— in their (not yet spiritual) way— from
material existants in act.

These things Husserl did not see. A man of greatness and funda-
mental integrity, he deserved the gratitude and affection Edith Stein
continued to feel for him while freeing herself from his influence.
But like so many others, he was a victim of Descartes and Kant.
The tragedy of Husserl lies in this, that, after being given his start by
Brentano, he made a desperate effort to liberate philosophic eros, and
at the moment he was about to succeed, he hurled it back into its
jail, binding it (because he was himself ensnared), with the finest of
threads, stronger by far than those of the old cogito, to illusions

42 T/i€ Degrcct erf Knowledge , op. cit., pp. 125-1 26.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

much more deceptive than all the Cartesian illusions, and which were
to bring ideosophy taken for philosophy to a refined form most
treacherous for the mind.

Husserl's procedure involved an intrinsic contradiction which his
idealist prejudice prevented him from perceiving. Believing, like Des-
cartes, that a reflexive gaze turned back upon the thinking subject
could be used to build a philosophy, he erected into a principle the
suspension of judgment , the epokhe dear to Pyrrho, by positing, as
the primary methodological rule for the philosophizing intellect, that
the latter is obliged (as a result of an a priori dictate and an idealist
postulate never critically examined) to put in parentheses the whole
range of extra-mental being (the very bread by which the intellect
lives) at the very time when it performs the act of knowing. Thus, by
a detestable rupture, we must separate the "object" perceived by the
intelligence— which we place at the interior of knowing— from the
"thing" which it perceives— which we banish to the exterior of know-
ing, in the parenthesis. As if the object perceived were not the thing
itself insofar as intelligibly perceived! The thing itself carried to the
very heart of the intelligence in order to become one with its vital
act! Henceforth, the intellect, violating the very law of its life, is
supposed to stop short at an object-phenomenon , which severs it
from itself as well as from what is in the real world.

What is the meaning of this? It means (at this point I am obliged
to do violence to the English language) that the intellect should
think being ( penser Vctre) while refusing to think it as such; in other
terms, it means that in thinking "being" I think something that is
thought , not something that is(en pensant Vctre , je pense du pense 9
non pas Vctre); or, as I have already observed : 43 I know being on
condition that it is put in parenthesis and abstracted out of sight (je
connais Vctre d condition de le mettre entre parentheses ou de faire
abstraction de lui ). Thus one sees emerge the absurdity inherent in
the first principle— let us call it the Husserlian Parenthesis, which cuts
knowledge in two, or the Husserlian Refusal— on which the whole
of contemporary phenomenology depends.

In this phenomenology, every regulation coming from being or the
real is henceforth rejected, and thought must do all its work while
leaving the real in the parenthesis, and with no other guide-marks

48 Cf. Chap. 1 , p. 8.

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107

than the variable and endlessly swarming aspects it discovers in sub-
jectivity— either the subjectivity of the intellectual operation itself, if
I may say so, or the subjectivity of the experience of man with all its
riches which, enthralling as they may be, have only the value of mere
fact seized by the good fortune of observation. As a result, the whole
of thought is delivered in its interpretations to the rule of the Veri-
similar and the Arbitrary, and the ideosophy is brought, come what
may, to the state of Grand Sophistry. Protagoras had already formu-
lated the great axiom: and that's the point to which they have all
come— man as the measure of all things, even of the God he worships.

CONTEMPORARY PHENOMENOLOGY

Whether they honor Husserl, or disregard and disown him (Man is
ungrateful), or dismiss the Meditations cartesiennes , all our phenom-
enologists presuppose Husserl and are the prisoners of his Refusal.

There are some— the existentialist theorists (have they chosen the
name to compensate for some frustration?)— in whom philosophic
eros struggles to free itself, and who thereby find themselves engaged
in a blind drama. It is in what I have just called the subjectivity of
the intellectual operation itself, with its infinity of aspects and
psychological shifts (to which, for the sake of a small ecstasy, they
claim to give an alleged “ontological” meaning) that they are attempt-
ing to find this impossible liberation. The great witness in this drama
is Heidegger, whom an ardent metaphysical eros, but enchained too,
relentlessly torments, and who, obsessed with anxiety for being, car-
ries on a tragic struggle against the emptiness of thought implied by
phenomenology, only to go and seek help now, it seems, from the
poets and the theogonic powers of their language: thereby bringing, as
has been said , 44 “the most significant evidence of the absence of
philosophy in our time.”

44 Pierre Trotignon, Heideggtr (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1965), p. 66.
Besides, Heidegger himself docs not wish to be a philosopher — but doubtless in
wishing to be or become something better (once more the Hegelian virus).

“Thomism,” writes Etienne Gilson, “is a philosophy of Sein insofar as it is a
philojiophy of e$ 9 c. Wheu young people invite us to make the discovery of Martin
Heidegger, they invite us, without knowing, to make them rediscover the trans-
ontk metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas. ... It would be interesting to know

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JACQUES MARITAIN

To the drama of which I am speaking our Sartre is, for his own
part, a nauseated witness (and less liberated than he likes to believe),
who has, I think, perceived, thanks to literature and something of the
novelist's sixth sense, a crack in the Parenthesis — situated so low down
that one can steal a glance at it without giving offense to methodology
—and, through the sewer, catch a glimpse of real existence, but (there
is an idealist for you) as a shapeless, enormous and obscene, unspeak-
able and monstrous insult to reason— the Absurd of pure and abso-
lute contingency . 45 And he was very quick to fill up the crack in the
Parenthesis and to bring back into his thought, in the capacity of
“object-phenomenon," that loathsome Absurd, in order to work out
with it an “ontology" of the phenomenon, or better still, “of the
trans-phenomenal being of the phenomenon," 46 and to declare that
“the world is en trop.” 47 Words put up with everything. Yet it is
clear that Sartre too brings us, in his own way, a forceful proof of the
absence of philosophy in our time. (Well, there are nevertheless two,
let us not forget it.)

Some among our other phenomenologists, a good many it seems,
have definitely renounced philosophic eros, and, with perfect peace
of mind, leave it tightly bound in its dark cell. To be theorists of
existentialism holds no attraction for them. What interests them is to
scrutinize and interpret (while still keeping, of course, extra-mental
reality in the Parenthesis, and conforming, good naturedly, to the
Husserlian Refusal) the world of human things which we are thirst-
ing to know— ourselves and our life and the whole mystery of our
past, as well as of our present beliefs and anxieties, history, culture,
art, philosophy (why not?), religion above all— which they submit to

what Heidegger would have thought had he known of the existence of a meta-
physics of esse before making his initial decisions. But we will never know; it is
too late. . . . How could we, since Heidegger himself will never know? I ask the
question only to suggest to those who urge us to follow him that there is no
danger in store. Perhaps we have but the handicap of our advantage: they are
urging us to follow those we have left behind/' (“ Trois legons sur le Thomisme
et sa situation presente ” Seminarium , No. 4, pp. 718-719.)

45 On this Sartrian idea of contingency, see the remarks of Claude Tresmontant
in Comment se pose aujourd’hui le probUme de V existence de Dieu (Paris: 6 d. du
Seuil, 1966), pp. 130-144.

46 Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. lxii.

47 Probably (it is but a possible interpretation) the author meant that the world
is a meaningless, unwanted and disgusting surplus, offending both reason and
man’s freedom.

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109

hermeneutics where it is forbidden to go beyond man and his meas-
ure, and where myths henceforth inevitably reign supreme. Since they
are quite intelligent thinkers, anxious to be thoroughly and precisely
informed and, more often than not, honest and sincere (although the
Grand Sophistry, hidden in the heaven of the mind, keeps them al-
ways under its wing), their investigations are remarkably instructive
and sometimes fascinating. Pjpvided it is not so craven as to accept
everything uncritically, philosophy can greatly profit by them. But
these investigations still remain under the regime of the Verisimilar
and the Arbitrary, of everything to the measure of man , and thus, of
a kind of latent immanentism; and finally, they seem to, but fail to,
quench our thirst. And not just our thirst. If we had only them for
guides they would land us in illusion.

Phenomenology is enjoying an immense prestige. I wish (without
expecting too much) that my necessarily long discussion of this most
recent of the mutations of idealism has been able to help some
readers clarify their own ideas on the subject.

There are still two remarks left to make. The first concerns a
radical error which the mind, if it wishes to free itself from the chains
which have fettered it for so long, should squarely reject once and for
all. This is the Kantian error. I quote a few lines from a contemporary
philosopher, who says what matters most on the subject: “If reason
is, as it were, an organon constituted a priori t we can ask ourselves by
what chance does reason happen to accord with the real. But if reason
is not constituted a priori, if the principles belonging to reason are in
fact drawn from the real itself through our knowledge of the real, then
one need hardly be astonished if there is accord between reason and
the real. . . . Rationality is not an order or a structure constituted
a priori , but a relation between the human mind and the real. . . .
Rationality is not determined a priori and in a purely formal way, but
with respect to the real, and in terms of the real. Rationality is,” in the
mathematical sense of the word, “a function of the real.” 48

My second remark concerns a truth (obvious but obscured by
generations of hair-splitters) which the mind, if it seeks to liberate
at last philosophic eros and liberate itself, should first of all recognize

CUudc TTeOTKtfrtaiat* op. cit., pp. 161-162.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

and always respect. I mean to say that the human mind, although
being a reason handling its concepts and held to the strictest logic (it
owes this to its carnal condition), is also an intellect, that is, a power
capable of seeing in the intelligible order as the eye sees in the sensi-
ble order, but with incomparably more certitude. Is it not through
such an intuition that the intellect knows the “first principles' 7 of
every demonstration? I am by no means speaking here of intuition
such as Bergson understood it— -although I am not forgetting that
there is a “Bergsonism of intention" much nearer than one believes to
Thomistic realism, nor that Bergson toward the end of his life, said
once that he and myself, that poor Jacques who had criticized him so
severely, had met “in the middle of the road." I do not forget, either,
that even when busy with its work or research of the most rational i

kind, the human mind (because it is an intellect drawing its suste- [

nance from the sensible world), is helped and prodded, in order to 1

work well, much more often than philosophers and scientists are will- i

ing to admit, by “intuitions," or flashes of the imagination— they
come to it unexpectedly, with the luck of the road, from the vigilance '
of sense and poetic instinct, or are born in the night of the uncon-
scious (let us say rather, of the preconscious or supra-conscious of the
spirit).

But I leave all that aside. It is of a totally different intuition that I '

am speaking: and intellectual intuition, purely and simply intellec- v

tual, which is the proper and sacred good of the intelligence as such
— the absolutely primary intuition without which there is no genu-
ine philosophic savior or wisdom: the intuition of being. To wish
for it is not enough to get it. Bergson got it through a substitute
which deceived him— and it was masked, in his way of conceptualiz-
ing it, by anti-intellectualist prejudice. Neither Husserl nor any ideos-
opher has had it. But whoever goes far enough in meditation will
experience it some day— I mean whoever manages to enter into that
alert and watchful silence of the mind where, consenting to the sim-
plicity of the true, the intellect becomes sufficiently available, and
vacant, and open, to hear what all things murmur, and to listen ,
instead of fashioning answers. Many have actually had this intuition ,
who were too distracted by everyday life or their own reasonings to
become aware of it. And many more among the common people

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

m

experience it in this way than among “cultured” people. And it is
enough to look at the gaze of certain children to realize that, without
their having in them any of the reflectiveness of adults, their gaze is
directed more at being than at the toys with which one amuses them,
or even at the world whose riches they constantly discover simply by
taking the trouble to receive them.

I will not try and describe what escapes any restraint and is beyond
any word (although tlie ’simplest of concepts and the simplest of
words are a valid sign of it), nor to lead someone where access is
given only in purest solitude of soul. But is it not possible to resort to
the language of metaphor, as inadequate as it is, to convey, not, to be
sure, that which the intelligence grasps, but an inkling of the experi-
ence of this grasping? Let us say then (I have said this before , 49
though somewhat differently): What I then perceive is like a pure
activity, a consistency, but superior to the whole order of the imagin-
able, a vivid tenacity, at once precarious (it is nothing for me to crush
a gnat) and fierce (within me, around me, mounts like a clamor the
universal vegetation) by which things surge up against me and tri-
umph over a possible disaster, stand there, and not merely there,
but in themselves, and by which they shelter in their thickness, in
the humble measure meted out to what is perishable, a kind of glory
demanding to be recognized.

That is what I can say of the experience in mvsclf, faible roseau
pensant , of the intuition of the actus essendi. A soul who is very close
to me once gave me this testimony: “It often happened that I
experienced, through a sudden intuition, the reality of my being, of
the profound, first principle which places me outside of nothingness.
A powerful intuition, whose violence sometimes frightened me, and
which has first given me the knowledge of a metaphysical absolute.” 50

The intuition of being is not only, like the reality of the world and
of things, the absolutely primary foundation of philosophy. It is the
absolutely primary principle of philosophy (when the latter is able to
be totally faithful to itself and achieve all of its dimensions) .

** Cf. A Preface to Metaphysics (New York: Sliced and Ward, 1940), p. 53.

50 Ralssa Mari tain, We Have Been Friends Together (New York: Image Books,
Doubleday and Co. 1961 ), p. 116.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

THE NEED FOR FABLES
OR INTELLECTUAL FALSE CURRENCY

I have already stated (pp. 104-105) that the liberation of philo-
sophic eros implies two operations, and have discussed the first of
these, which concerns idealism and its after-effects, at some length.
There is still one other thing which it behooves the mind to get rid of
in order to bring about this liberation. This time it is not only philo-
sophic eros which must be set free: for we are dealing with all that of
which the hunger for the real, co-essential to the human soul, is de-
frauded; and this hunger longs to be satisfied with the real insofar as
philosophic knowledge can convey it to us, but it also longs for the
real insofar as it can be conveyed to us through more exalted ways.

Frustrated by an unbearable fast, such a hunger can give way in us
to a pathological need which is equally vast, and seems a perversion of
it. We have now to examine this need, for it worries us a great deal
and we must get rid of it. What need? The need for fables and intel-
lectual false currency. It is enormous nowadays and its roots go deep.

As a result of prejudices at work for a century in our proud modern
culture, we are convinced not only that metaphysical knowledge is
entirely valueless, but that in the realm of non-metaphysical knowl-
edge only one type is capable of unshakeable certitude: Science —
either mathematical sciences or sciences of the phenomena of nature.
(This is rather funny, because great mathematicians tell us that the
poetic instinct and the sense of beauty play a great part in their
business, 51 and because the more physics, the queen of the sciences
of nature, advances in its admirable discoveries, the more its fecundity
seems to depend on what M. d'Espagnat calls "the perpetual renewal
of scientific perspectives/' 52 on rapidly changing hypotheses, and on
ways of mathematical interpretation which vary with the diversity of

51 See Marston Morse, "Mathematics and the Arts,” Yale Review, Summer
1951, cited in my book, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1954), p. 93, n. 33.

62 Bernard d’Espagnat, Conceptions de la Physique contemporaine (Paris:
Hermann, 1965). This rigorous and lucid book offers philosophers concerned with
epistemology a remarkable presentation of the actual state of the question in the
case of theoretical physics.

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“3

cases, and even at times contradict one another. All this is quite
normal, moreover, as far as this particular level in human knowledge is
considered. But this in no way alters our general conviction that
scientists are the only ones to perform a work of rational knowledge
worthy of the name, and that Science, in the modern sense of the
word, is endowed with an absolute privilege of intellectual certainty.)

On the other hand,Jt is clgrr that science as such has nothing to
tell us about the problems which matter most to us, and about the
idea of the world, of man, perhaps of God, which we cannot escape
forming for ourselves, any more than about the torment of the abso-
lute, the “why were we born?”; the “to what can we wholly give our
hearts?”; the desire for that fire which will burn us without consum-
ing us, which as hidden as they may be, are there, in our very depths.
All of this remains completely outside the scope of science.

No one is more keenly aware of the limitations inherent in the very
validity of science, and more scrupulously careful in observing them,
than the scientists themselves, although they sometimes feel how
desirable it would be, if it were possible, to go beyond these limita-
tions in order to work out a de natura rerum, and reach, in a rational
synthesis in accordance with their findings, an overall view of that
world on which they w'ork in their closely guarded precinct. A few of
them, Julian Huxley for instance, have tried their hand at it by extra-
polating the concepts of science— that is, by carrying them outside the
field where they are valid. (How could they do otherwise, since no
one has furnished them— supposing they wished to learn how to use
it— with the only instrument adapted to such an enterprise: philo-
sophic knowledge with the approach and concepts proper to it?) The
attempts in question have all been unhappy. Without being in the
least aware of it, these perfectly honest minds had issued bad money,
though not very harmful. This kind of bad money has a circulation as
restricted as it is short-lived, and hardly deceives anybody but those
who naively coin it.

With the phcnomcnologists it is quite another story. Mixed in with
the good copper coin of psychological observation and the human
sciences whose treasures they are exploiting for us, the highbrow
fables and false currency they issue (in perfect good faith, I am not
forgetting) enjoy a very widespread circulation, and succeed in mak-
ing philosophic intelligence come to grief. That’s a fine achievement.

ii 4

JACQUES MARITAIN

Because of their very renunciation of attaining reality in itself, such
ideosophers cannot, however, launch the mind on miraculous dreams
or enthralling adventures in which its living forces will blaze in vain.

Of course, there are also counterfeiters, the quacks, and their
clientele. But these don't count, even for our precious intelligentsia
which leaves them where they belong, in the gutter.

When we bring all this data together, what sort of balance sheet
should we draw up? Nothing but a blank: a blank rather innocuous,
as far as the pseudo-philosophical ventures of a few scientists are
concerned; an immense void with respect to philosophical intelli-
gence snared and deluded by phenomenology; an absolute blank when
it comes to the aspiration of the spirit for that supreme wisdom
which Hegel sought in vain.

Except for the quite restricted province of science busy with in-
terpreting measurable phenomena and achieving mastery over matter,
the great hunger for the real, co-essential with the human soul, has
absolutely nothing to allay what it longs for. Why be surprised at the
enormous need for fables and intellectual false currency which has de-
veloped within us? This need is limitless. What it craves for is not any
kind whatsoever of fables or false currency even enjoying a widespread
circulation; it is the great Fable and the great False Currency, which
will cheat our great hunger, and will be current in the entire world,
controlling the entire market of our hearts' and minds' demands.

That bad money chases out good is a familiar adage, and it applies
equally to the false currency of the intelligence, at least for a while.
This spell was very short for the early Christian Gnostics, however
sublime the Logos they claimed to represent may have seemed. Far
from answering a need for fiction, they were in front of truth itself,
and the reaction of faith was too sharp, the offensive of the Apologist
Fathers too vigorous, for their influence to be lasting. History has
witnessed the appearance of other superior minds with a passion for
the truth, who deluded themselves and uttered the great Fable and
issued great intellectual False Currency— the latter has never been the
work of purveyors of fiction or counterfeiters , 53 it demands perfect
sincerity, at least to begin with, great intellectual power, and the en-

63 A counterfeiter is one who makes counterfeit money on purpose, with the
intention of deceiving.

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ll 5

raptured devotion of noble spirits led astray in spite of themselves.
(Not completely in spite of themselves, for there is at the outset a
sin against the intellect: the refusal to recognize the intrinsic order of
the human intelligence, with the essential distinction it requires be-
tween the typical forms of knowledge of which the mind is capable.
From the start one mixes everything together: since, scanty as it may
have been in such and such an age, philosophy of nature, metaphysics,
theology, natural mystique; even touches of supernatural mystique, all
of which are made to contaminate and corrupt one another in a
powerful high-soaring lyrical flight— unnatural and deceptive because
it is pseudo-angelic.) The Moslem Gnostics have a particular interest
for us because they were monists who clung nevertheless (hence a
tremendous and stimulating inner tension) to faith in the one and
transcendent God of Islam. I am speaking of them without scruples,
despite my lack of scholarship because conversations with Louis
Gardet have given me the necessary information on the subject. He
made me share his admiration (the most guarded) for the genius of
Ibn ‘ArabI, that great wondrous synthesizer of the thirteenth century,
fascinated by a world in the process of emanation which came from
God, manifested God to God himself, and returned to him . 54 The
remote and contrasted analogy which my friend pointed out between
the thought of Ibn 'ArabI and certain views of Teilhard seemed to me
quite remarkable. Before Ibn 'Arab! there had been Nasir e-Khosraw,
and, after him would come Mulla Sadra. In the Christian world there
was Jacob Boehme, Fichte perhaps, and some other great names. But
none of the men dedicated to Gnosis I have just referred to were an-
swering a general need for the great Fable, any more than were the
Christian Gnostics of the first centuries. This privilege was reserved
for our time.

As far as the history of culture is concerned, the great Fable or great
intellectual False Currency, taken in itself, is not as dangerous as it
appears. What is infinitely more dangerous is the need for this coun-
terfeit money because, as long as it is with us, it will insist on being
served. After each issue, it will require another, it is never satisfied. In
spite of everything, it is a piece of good luck for our age that TeiJ-

M Cf. Louis Gandct, “Exptrienc* et Gnou chcz Ibn 'Arab!” an article soon to
appear in a collective work in honor of Ibn ‘ArabI, under the auspices of the
General Secretariat of Arts, Letters and Social Sciences, UAR.

n6 JACQUES MARITAIN

hardism— whatever disastrous simplifications may always accompany
the enthusiastic popularization of a great impassionate conception —
owes its origins to a genius as lofty as that of Pere Teilhard de
Chardin with so tenacious, so ardent, and so artlessly pure a faith.
After Teilhardism, something new will be demanded, and after that
something else, which will be worth even less.

As superfluous as it is for any sensible person, I am here inserting a
parenthesis. For there are things which are self-evident, but on which,
nevertheless, it is worth our while to insist. The offensive terms which
I have had to use in this section refer to ideas that are in circulation,
not to the person who conceived them. The solitary, painful, obsti-
nate research of Pere Teilhard, his patient courage in the face of the
hardly very noble obstacles set up in his path, his zeal for truth, his
total gift of self to a mission which he considered prophetic, the pure
sincerity which shines from one end of his work to the other, and the
extraordinary personal experience which he underwent, are all things
which deserve deepest respect. He was a paleontologist of great worth,
a Christian whose faith never wavered, a priest of exemplary fidelity. I
said earlier that none of the varieties of the great Fable or great intel-
lectual False Currency exemplified by history was ever the work of
dealers in fiction or counterfeiters. Nobody will do me the wrong of
imagining that words I have explicitly ruled out with respect to the
person of the great Gnostics, could ever be applied by me to the per-
son of Pere Teilhard de Chardin, nor that outrage and self-contradic-
tion form part of my arsenal. And yet, when I consider, not Teilhard
certainly, but the ideas which he put in circulation, and especially
Teilhardism, with its literature of propaganda and its enraptured ec-
clesiastical retinue, no matter how hard I am striving, it is impossible
to avoid offensive terms if I look for exactness. And the fact is, I
pledged at the beginning of this book to call a spade a spade.

TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
AND TEILHARDISM

I had the honor of meeting Pere Teilhard de Chardin a few times.
When I saw him for the first time— it was at Paris a long time ago — I
was struck by the total isolation in which he carried out his research.

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117

He asked himself a good many questions and, on leaving him, I won-
dered how, in a great religious Order such as the one he belonged to,
be was not helped by a few friends, good philosophers or theologians,
who would form a team with him. Maybe he didn't want such a
thing. (Just why, after years of study under teachers no doubt wisely
chosen for their mission, he remained in perfect ignorance or forget-
fulness of the Doctor , Comrjiunis , is another mystery, which has
astonished Gilson.) *

In the course of another meeting, he spoke in a moving way of the
scientists among his friends with whom his language permitted him to
broach the problem of religion without obstacles or the feeling of
tbeir being pushed out of their own home ground, and I had the im-
pression he found this a valuable encouragement. During the war, he
sent me from China a pamphlet 55 whose contents confirmed me
in certain of my views, and which I cited in one of my books . 58 It
was toward the end of the war, in New York, that I saw him for the
last time. He did not conceal a certain bitterness (understandable
enough) toward the ecclesiastical authorities. For my part, I can't say
I liked the way, a few years later, his papers circulated anonymously in
the seminaries.

There is a justice to be rendered to him, which is that he was al-
ways at the opposite pole from idealism or ideosophy. He never stop-
ped believing with an unshakable certitude in the reality of the world.
With respect to realism, in the sense this word has for epistemology,
and to the primary foundation of philosophy (it is, nevertheless, only
the foundation) he was, without realizing it, in full agreement with
St. Thomas. It is their only meeting point; and yet it left room, all
the same, for a serious ambiguity. For while St. Thomas was perfectly
certain of the reality of the world, he didn't put so much fervor into
it; he had only to open his eyes. Whereas “faith in the world" and
“faith in God" were, so to speak, the two poles of Teilhard's thought.
Everybody knows how he spoke of these two types of faith.

And finally did he not state once that his effort to discover a “better
Christianity" (the “meta-Christianity" which he mentioned to Gil-
son) was directed toward a religion in which the personal God would

M Reflexions sut le progrh, Peking, 1041.

56 7 Tie Rights of Man and Natural Law (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
194a).

n8 JACQUES MARITAIN

become "the soul of the World that our religious and cultural stage of
development calls for ?" 57 (something to delight the ancient
Stoics . . .)

At the very root of Teilhard's thought there was, I believe, a poetic
intuition— extremely powerful— of the sacred worth of created na-
ture: a worth to which no limits could be assigned. I am imagining a
Lucretius who would have been Christian.

This intuition had to be reconciled with a faith in the one and
triune God and in the Incarnate Word— and simultaneously with a re-
ligious awareness, extremely powerful in its own right, of the presence
of God in the world. (In this religious awareness, natural mystique
must have played the greater part, for it caused the soul to experience
in some way the created effects of the Presence of immensity, but, in a
soul living from grace, it could no doubt include also touches of su-
pernatural mystique, mingled, as this whole experience was, with a
singular human exaltation.) I am thinking of the great text of Teil-
hard, The Mass on the World.

How realize such a reconciliation, and attempt to conceptualize it?
By taking hold of the idea of evolution, which biology, astrophysics,
microchemistry have made familiar to science, so as to give a mystical
sense to it (to it too), and make of it a great Myth of the universal
reality: we have thus to contemplate a sacred Evolution carrying
through a series of threshold-crossings a matter endowed with spiritual
potentialities, and infinitely humble at the outset, to the very glory of
the sons of God, and the throne of that personal God whose incarnate

57 Lettres d Ldontine Zanta (Paris: Descl6e De Brouwer, 1965). The italics are
mine. I reproduce here the entire sentence: “What is coming to dominate my
interests and inner preoccupations, as you already know, is the effort to establish
within me, and spread around me, a new religion (let us call it, if you like, a
better Christianity) in which the personal God ceases to be the great neolithic
proprietor of old in order to become the soul of the World which our religious and
cultural stage of development calls for.”

In this text, it is fitting to underline not merely “the soul of the World , which
our religious and cultural stage calls for,” but also the words: “the effort to
establish within me and spread around me.” This “spread around me” obliges us
to conclude that Etienne Gilson allowed himself to be carried away by an impulse
of the heart when, noting that the doctrine of Teilhard “was hardly a doctrine,
but rather a way of feeling,” he added, “one could not possibly maintain that he
did anything whatever to spread it.” See his Article “Le cas Teilhard de Chardin”
op. cit . , p. 735. He never stopped trying to spread it.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

119

Son is, at the heart of the cosmos, the principle motor of the whole of
becoming.

Thus, it seems to me, may be outlined, as to its essentials, the bare
trajectory of Teilhard’s thought. This thought gives to Science a daz-
zling primacy. Actually, the science of the scientists has been entirely
outpaced, nay more, swept along and absorbed into a great torrent
of ardent meditation, in which science, faith, mystique, theology and
philosophy in a diffused state, are inextricably mingled and con-
founded. And in this we are forced indeed to recognize the sin
against the intellect to which I have already drawn attention . 58
Doubtless it was in all innocence that Teilhard committed it, since
the idea of a specific distinction between the different degrees of
knowledge was always completely foreign to him. Yet even so, it was a
sin against the intellect in its own right, and, as such, an irreparable
one.

That is why, if we place ourselves in an authentically theological
perspective in order to consider the doctrine ("hardly a doctrine,
rather a way of feeling”) of Teilhard de Chardin, we must say with
Gilson that, in the poetic world in which he introduces us "whoever
has followed the history of Christian thought finds himself in familiar
country. The Teilhardian theology is one more Christian gnosis, and
like gnoses from Marcion to the present, it is a theology-fiction. We
recognize all the traditional earmarks of the breed: a cosmic perspec-
tive on all problems, or perhaps we should say a perspective of cos-
mogenesis. We have a cosmic material, a cosmic Christ , 59 and, since
the latter is the physical center of creation, we have a Christ who is
basically an ‘evolutor’ and ‘humanizator,’ in short, a ‘universal
Christ’ as an explanation of the universal mystery, which is but one
with the Incarnation. Cosmogenesis thereby becomes Christogenesis,
giving rise to the Christie and the Christosphere, an order which
crowns the noosphere and perfects it through the transforming pres-
ence of Christ. This nice vocabulary is not cited as blameworthy in it-
self, but merely as symptomatic of the taste which all gnoses show for

58 Cf. pp. 1 14-1 1 5.

™ In support of his views, Teilhard appealed to St. Paul by assimilating the
thought of the Apostle to his own in 3 way which only the “transports of passion,”
a.s is said in famous criminal cases, can excuse. At the conclusion of this book there
is a long Note on a I'ext of St. Paul which I have written on the Subject. [J.M.]

120 JACQUES MARITAIN

pathetic neologisms, hinting at unfathomable perspectives and heavy
with affectivity." 60

In the matter of doctrine, we are here in the regime (impossible to
invent another word nor one less offensive to pious ears, nor more
exact) of the Great Fable. While it is true that Teilhardism— I say
Teilhardism , the ideology fabricated by the initiates and given circula-
tion by the popular press— presents itself as a doctine (which we must
describe for what it is); on the contrary, what matters essentially in
Teilhard himself is a personal experience, and, truly speaking, incom-
municable, although he never ceased looking for ways to communi-
cate it. This accounts for the title chosen by Etienne Gilson for his
excellent study; 61 since it unfortunately appeared in a publication
which is not easily come by, I will offer a few extracts from it in the
course of my own reflections. I would like first to have cited the pages
where Gilson pays tribute to the person of Teilhard, but I was pleased
to pay such a tribute myself just a few pages ago, and I see no point in
repeating myself.

The core of Gilson's study, it seems to me, is the part where he
accounts for that meta-Christianity about which Teilhard, on the spur
of the moment, once spoke to him in New York. The term "left him
nonplussed" at first, but on further thought, Teilhard's meaning was
not slow in dawning on him. The key was furnished by a passage in
Christianisme et Evolution , Suggestions pour servir & une theologie
nouvelle: "Roughly speaking," Teilhard writes, "we can say that while
the main preoccupation of Theology during the first centuries of the
Church was to determine, intellectually and mystically, the position
of Christ in relation to the Trinity, its vital concern in our day has
become this: to analyze and specify the relations of existence and in-
fluence connecting together Christ and the Universe." 62

Teilhard believed that "in the first century of the Church, Chris-
tianity made its definitive entry into human thought by boldly as-

60 Etienne Gilson, “Trois legons sur le Thomisme et sa situation presente ,
Seminarium (No. 4, 1965), pp. 716-717.

61 “Le cas Teilhard de Chardin,” op. cit., pp. 720 ff.

62 Quoted by Claude Cu£not, Teilhard de Chardin (Paris: ed. du Seuil, 1963),
p. 141. '‘I don’t believe,” Gilson remarks, “that any text of P£re Teilhard is more
significant or expresses more clearly and simply the meaning of his enterprise.”
“Le cas Teilhard de Chardin ,” p. 730.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

121

fimikting the Christ of the Gospel to the Alexandrian Logos." 68
Here he was wrong, for as Gilson puts it, what happened was “exactly
the opposite. The Apologist Fathers did not boldly assimilate the
Jesus of the Gospel to the Alexandrian Logos"; it was the Alexandrian
Logos which, even more daringly, they “assimilated to Christ the Sav-
ior of the Gospel." 64 Be that as it may, what was called for today, in
Teilhard's view, was the reverse of what he believed the Fathers had
done. It involves, thfen, a “complete transposition of Christology," 66
i “generalization of Christ the Redeemer into a veritable Christ the
cvolutor." w We must “integrate Christianity with cosmogene-
iis"; 91 for it is imperative that “today's theology assimilate Christ to
the cosmic force, origin and end of Evolution. What a revolution! We
aie simply invited to bring back our faith in the Redeemer to its
proper place." 68

In this way, Teilhard “can in one stroke speak of that ‘elevation of
the historical Jesus to a universal physical function' and that ‘ultimate
identification of cosmogenesis with a Christogenesis.' Note the
word elevation! We thus obtain the ‘neo-logos of modem philosophy/
who is no longer primarily the redeemer of Adam, but the ‘evolutory
principle of a universe in motion.' Look how careful he has been to
preserve Christ, they will tell us! Yes, but what Christ?. ..Iam not
sure whether an omega point of science exists, but I feel perfectly
sure that in the Gospel, Jesus of Nazareth is quite another thing than
the ‘concrete germ' of the Christ Omega. It's not that the new func-
tion of Christ lacks grandeur or nobility, but that it is something ut-
terly different from the old. We feel a little as though we were before
an empty tomb: they have taken away Our Lord and we do not know
where they have laid him." 69

We would be making a mistake, however, if we thought that Teil-
hard ever wished to substitute for the historical Jesus of the Gospel a
Christ “elevated to a universal physical function," and to replace the

** Teilhard de Chardm, op. cit. r p. 141 (Gilson, p. 731 ) .

M Gilson, p. 732.

** Ibid., p. 721.

•• Teilhard ae Chardm , Christumisme et Evolution, p. 142.

07 Claixk Cu6not, Teilhard de Chardm (Paris: 6d. du Scuil, 1963), p. 143,
(Gibon, p. 734).

** Gibon, p. 731.

Ibid., pp. 732-733 (all the formulations of Teilhard de Chardin quoted there
ace found in the work of Claude Cu^ixyt, op. crt., p. 142) .

121

JACQUES MARITAIN

Christ of faith by a cosmic Christ— in whom, as Gilson remarks, “no
scientist believes /' 70 (although he was imagined for their sake). The
turning upside down of Christianity which Teilhard's “meta-Chris-
tianity" amounted to is an operation of much vaster scope. What is to
be done is to make the very Christ of history into the cosmic
Christ. It seems to me I can catch a glimpse of the manner in which
Teilhard was able to conceive such an enterprise, when I consider
what is implied in a purely evolutive conception where being is re-
placed by becoming and every essence or nature stably constituted in
itself vanishes.

If the truth of this conception be granted, does not being man lie
in being or having been the cosmos itself throughout the whole im-
mense process by which it was hominized? Could the Word take flesh
in Mary without having “taken matter," if I may say, in the entire
cosmos and throughout the whole extent of its history? Could he
become Incarnate one day, at a certain moment in history, without
having first been (why should I be the only one afraid of neologisms?)
Immaterized and Encosmicized during the whole course of the evolu-
tion which led up to that point? If he made himself man , it is because
he also made himself world. There you have the “generalization of
Christ the Redeemer into a veritable Christ the evolutor," or at
least the only way I can find to give such a formula an intelligible
meaning. (Did I say intelligible? My tongue has tripped me up: let us
say rather, almost thinkable.)

This Christianity turned upside down would be for religious
thought, if religious thought w r ere to become purely imaginary, a
grandiose vision, enchanting it with the spectacle of the divine ascent
of creation toward God. But what does it tell us of the secret path
which matters more than any spectacle? What can it tell us of the es-
sential, of the mystery of the cross and the redemptive blood? or of
that grace whose presence in a single soul is worth more than all of na-
ture or of that love which makes us co-redeemers with Christ, and
those blessed tears through which his peace reaches us? The new
gnosis is, like all gnoses— a poor gnosis . 71

If, moreover, we wish to get a more complete idea of the Teilhard -
ian gnosis and of the “reversals of perspective" which it calls for, I

70 Ibid., p. 732.

71 See Appendix II, on The Theology of Teilhard.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

12 3

must cite once more (I do so reluctantly, but the texts are there and,
though taken from a private letter, they disclose the thought of the
author with an unquestionable exactness) the aforementioned letter
to Leontine Zanta, which brings us a few clarifications offered by Pere
Teilhard himself: "It is not a question/ ” he wrote, "of superimposing
Christ upon the world, but of 'panchristizing' the Universe. The deli-
cate point (I have partly touched on it in Christologie et Evolution)
is that, in pursuing this line of thought, one is led not merely to an
enlargement of views, but to a reversal of perspectives: Evil (no
longer punishment for a fault, but 'sign and effect' of Progress) and
Matter (no longer a guilty and inferior element, but 'the stuff of
Spirit’) take on a meaning diametrically opposed to the meaning ha-
bitually considered as Christian . 72 Christ emerges from the transfor-
mation incredibly exalted (at least I think so— and all the worried
ones to whom I have spoken of it share my view). But is this still
really the Christ of the Gospel? And if it is not he, on what, hence-
forth is based what we seek to build?” 73

One will observe that to regard matter as a guilty element is a
platonic notion held to be senseless by the thought "habitually con-
sidered as Christian.” And although Christian thought believes that
our condition of fallen nature is the result of original sin, it has never
held that evil (illness, the loss of a child, any kind of affliction) is al-
ways "punishment for a fault.” The Lord said just the opposite apro-
pos of the man born blind. One will notice also that "transformation”
from which (because it panchristizes 11 the Universe”) Christ emerges
“incredibly exalted”— he, the Word Incarnate, whose grace, causing
streams of eternal life to gush forth, raises us to the very life of God.
Finally, one will note that at one point Pere Teilhard asked himself
apropos of his cosmic Christ, the question: "Is this still the Christ of
the Gospel?” (without which, he added, and here we recognize the
fidelity of his heart, his construction w r ould lack all foundation). But
his faith in the Christ of the Gospel w r as too strong— and his faith in
the world too— for him not to be inwardly convinced that the ques-
tion he asked could only be resolved in the affirmative. "One thing

71 In the same letter, p. 129, apropos the Esquisse d'un Univers Personnel ,
which he was soon to draw up, he added: “Gradually everything is being trans-
formed: the moral is fused with the physical, individuality extended into Univer-
sality, matter becomes the structure of Spirit/’

T * Lettrcs A Leontine Z anta, op. cit., pp. 127-128.

124

JACQUES MAR I T A I N

reassures me/' he continues in the same letter, "it is that the growing
light within me is accompanied by love and by self-renunciation in
the Greater than me. This could not possibly mislead/' Would that
such proofs, alas, as noble as they are, could never mislead. The this
with which Pere Teilhard set his mind at rest did much to confirm
him in his worst illusions.

Gilson is probably right in reminding us that the religious experi-
ence of Pere Teilhard actually counts for much more than his doctrine.
"Scientific illumination and the cult of evolution, in a manner some-
what similar to the confused evolutionism of Julian Huxley, invited
him to conceptualize, in a language that was imprecise although it
wore a scientific look, a religious experience of whose depth there
can be no doubt" 74 and which, whatever the tenor of its spiritual
authenticity or the illusions it may have fostered, was the life of his
life , 75 but which has been absolutely personal to him, and without
which moreover, his "doctrine makes no sense." 76

"That is why," Gilson continues, "I see no danger in store." 77 On
that point, I am less of an optimist. The religious experience of Pere
Teilhard was not transmissible, that's perfectly true, but Teilhardism
is transmissible, and it transmits itself extremely well, with words,
confused ideas, a mystico-philosophical imagery, and a whole emo-
tional commotion of huge illusory hopes, which a good many men of
good faith are ready to accept as a genuinely exalting intellectual
synthesis and a new theology.

Yet I have a hunch that this Teilhardian gnosis and its attempt at a
metachristianity received from the Council a rather heavy blow. For
when all is said and done, it was nothing for Marx and Engels to turn

74 Gilson, pp. 735-736.

75 Thus, to quote Gilson again (op cit. y p. 727), “like a nugget of pure gold,
his piety and childhood faith” remained always in him, in spite of everything,
“intact and almost miraculously preserved beneath ceaseless alluvions of science
and the rest, He himself underlined this continuity. . . . For him the cosmic
Christ was first of all the Child Jesus, and was always to remain so. The newborn
of Christmas is exactly the same who became ‘the Child of Bethlehem and the
Crucified One, the Prime Mover and the collecting Nucleus of the world itself/ ”
(The passage of Teilhard reproduced here is cited by Claude Cudnot, op cit. 9
p. 65.) Teilhard felt all this in a spiritual experience in which a good many
heterogeneous elements were mingled, before attempting to express it in the con-
ceptualization we have been dealing with above (pp. 115-122).

7(5 Gilson, p. 728.

77 Gilson, p. 736.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

12 5

Hegel upside down, but to turn Christianity upside down so that it is
no longer rooted in the Trinity and the Redemption but in the evolv-
ing Cosmos is quite a different matter. No theologian, mystic, or
meditative scholar, no matter how hard he tries, is equal to that— nor
even a wonder-worker. It would require the one whom the Creed calls
the unam y sanctam , catholicam et apostolicam (when you come right
down to it, it's the Church, isn't it, who teaches Christianity, whether
“better” or not better Christianity). This means that it would require
a Council. It is possible that certain Teilhardists, when they heard
there was to be a Council, looked, if not for a dogmatic confirmation
of the cosmic Christ (it was obviously too soon for that), at least for
some encouragement, be it only the shadow of an encouragement, for
their doctrine. But read the texts of the Council, study them with the
aid of a magnifying glass, and you won't find there the ghost of a
shadow of such an encouragement. With a magnanimous serenity, the
Council utterly and completely ignored this great effort at a “better
Christianity And nothing could be more classical than its two dog-
matic Constitutions. If the partisans of Teilhardism did not have
their head in the clouds, they would realize a little just what this
means for them. They will have to wait for a new Council, and an-
other, and Lord knows how many after that. Or else, if their patience
wears thin, they will go so far as to form themselves into a separate
sect, as did Marcion and his disciples, at the risk of making Pere Teil-
hard rise from his grave to condemn them? All that is none too pleas-
ant.

Getting back to Pere Teilhard himself, I would merely like to say in
conclusion that he has not been well served, either by his friends, his
enemies, nor in the first place, by himself. What he strove to translate
into rough drafts or suggestions of a system— and what both friend
and foe hastened to harden into a doctrine sure of itself, and of its
power to renew everything— were ideas at work in the very fire of a
quite peculiar kind of spiritual experience, where the faith of his
childhood, ardent and vivid until death, struggled with great scientific
dreams: an experience which, by its very nature, remained strictly in-
communicable.

Whatever Teilhard may have done or hoped to do, such ideas, in
reality, could only find expression as fragments of a vast poem which
he would have written. One doesn't expect a poem to bring us any

iz6

kind of rational knowledge whatever, be it scientific, philosophical, or
theological. One expects it only to give us a glimpse of what, in an
obscure contact, the poet has seized in himself and in things at the
same time. But we can admire such a poem for its boldness and its
beauty. And it can awaken in those who love it — particularly the poem
I am speaking of— fertile ideas and lofty aspirations, and can likewise
serve to overcome their prejudices and defenses, opening their mind
to the flame of living faith which burned in the soul of the poet. For
it is the privilege of poetry to be able to transmit an invisible flame,
and through the grace of God, a flame of such a nature.

Well, this poem which Teilhard would have written, and which he
actually gave us in a kind of travesty, is what his work really was. If
Teilhard's work had been taken for what it truly was (but which he
did not want it to be), both his overly zealous friends and those ene-
mies who were over-anxious to condemn him, would doubtless have
been disappointed, and he himself the first to protest. But this work
would have retained its most authentic nobility and dignity, and Teil-
hard and the Christian world would have been spared not a little
turmoil and unfortunate misunderstanding. But then there would
have been no Teilhardism, or mad hope for the advent of a better
Christianity celebrating the glories of the cosmos.

There are many, I surmise, whose hearts have been opened to the
grace of faith by Pere Teilhard de Chardin, or the reading of his books.
Not only is it fitting that they acknowledge and revere the memory
of one who was of such help to them, but one can also understand the
respect and admiration they harbor for his works and for what Gilson
and I call his gnosis, which no doubt appears to them as a well-
founded doctrine. Yet it is not to it that they actually owe the gift of
the truth which sets one free, but to the flame to which I have just
alluded, and which, from the heart of Pere Teilhard, and through the
channel of a “theology-fiction," reached them, thanks to the holy
grace of God and thanks to the grace of poetry, which is not superna-
tural, but descends also from the Father of lights.

March 31, 1966

6 THE TRUE NEW FIRE

THE REQUESTS AND
RENEWALS - OF GENUINE

KNOWLEDGE

A GREAT WISE MAN

In the first part of the previous chapter I tried to show that human
reason, infirm as it may be, is not, of itself, precluded from the possi-
bility of attaining some day a doctrine essentially grounded in truth ,
with respect to the highest problems man may grapple with in his
quest for truth, and which pertain to philosophy and theology. Such
an attainment is something possible, I wrote, it is certainly not some-
thing probable. I added, however, that the improbable sometimes
occurs.

The Catholic Church— who is entrusted only with the deposit of
faith, but who, in order to maintain it both intact and progressive
(for here too there is progress, I mean as far as the revealed dogma
becomes more and more explicit) needs solid judgment and has re-
ceived a gift of discernment unquestionably superior to that of all her
professors— seems convinced that, thanks to a singular good fortune,
the improbable in question has actually occurred as regards theology
(and philosophy ). 1 And an old peasant like me, who, having not
been entrusted with any sacred deposit, is obliged to no particular
prudence, and feels perfectly free to say all he is thinking, has a firm

1 “So heartily do we approve the great praises accorded this most divine of
geniuses," declared Pius XI in 1923, “that we think Thomas should be called
not merely the Angelic Doctor, hut the Common, or Universal Doctor of the
Church, for the Church has made his doctrine her own." (Encyclical Studiorum
ducem)

n8

JACQUES MARITAIN

certitude that such in fact was the case: thanks to a long historical
development in which Eastern and Western Christianity (even, at a
given moment, through Islam) were equally engaged, and thanks to
the exceptional genius— exceptionally favored by the historic moment
(and by graces from on high)— of a European (alas, one cannot avoid
being born somewhere) who could never speak any language except
Neapolitan and Latin (no time for Berlitz) and who never believed
he had a prophetic mission— but he had read all the Fathers, and “all
the books/' 2 and he knew the Bible by heart (who knows? that's per-
haps the case for Bultmann and Vogtle, and our other biblicists).
And not without weeping and trembling, he found himself invested
with the gravest of responsibilities: to set in order and integrate the
immense labor of knowledge and wisdom by means of which the ages
of faith had sought to acquire some rational understanding of the di-
vine mystery which had been proclaimed piecemeal by the prophets,
and in its fullness by the Incarnate Word. “What is God?" the child
used to ask his teachers at the Abbey of Monte Cassino where, at the
age of five, he had been presented as an oblate by his parents (who
already saw him Abbot-Bishop). He never did anything but ask this
question.

Thomas Aquinas was a man of extraordinary humility; Guillaume
de Tocco, his first biographer, makes a big point of this. We know
that at the Convent of Saint-Jacques in Paris he listened to Albertus
Magnus without once opening his mouth, and that the students
dubbed him the great Dumb Ox of Sicily. Shortly after, at Cologne,
where he had followed his teacher, they pitied this silent one until
the day when a student who had been moved “by compassion" to
repeat a difficult lesson for him, stumbled all of a sudden, and the
Dumb Ox serenely explained the whole business to him— truth is first
served, isn't it?

It was owing to his meekness of heart and humility, writes Tocco,
that he was given in contemplation the knowledge of what he taught.
At the moment of becoming Master in theology, so appalled was he
by the magnitude of his new responsibility that he could not stop his
prayers and tears, “because I am forced to receive the dignity of
Master and I lack the necessary learning." At the end of his life,

2 La chair est triste, helas , et fai lu torn les Imes. (Mallarm£) “The flesh is sad,
alas, and I've read all the books.”)

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

12 9

whatever he had written seemed to him “like so much straw.” His
Master's cap was never for him a matter of the least pride, nor did he
feel he was failing in his duties toward this cap when, in Bologna,
panting for breath (he was quite stout) he hurried to keep up with a
fellow friar whom he accompanied in town and who had called him a
dawdler.

Each time he set to work, thi^ Doctor wept and prayed a good deal.
It was near the altat that he would go seeking guidance. With his
head pressed against the tabernacle, “he would remain there with
many tears and great sobs, and would then return to his cell and con-
tinue writing.” He has been above all a contemplative, great among
the greatest, constantly in touch with heaven through a very pure and
very humble oraison. Contemplata aliis tradere , is a motto of the
Dominican Order and it's from St. Thomas that the phrase derives.
He took it seriously.

He had, along with that, a good sense of humor, drawing donkey
heads in the margins of his manuscript when his pen reached the
name of some particularly esteemed author. Once, when a brother
beckoned him (for he was thought to be naive) to the window to see
an ox flying by, he hastened to do so, only to say to the sly one: “It is
less surprising to see an ox fly than to hear a friar lie.”

Why have I begun to go on about his character and personality?
Because I love him. And also, with a hope it will help prepare me a
little to say something about his doctrine, which I don't feel worthy
to speak of.

For here we actually have it, that improbable doctine essentially
grounded in truth, which, instead of remaining in a state of mere
possibility, as a virtual goal to which the contrasting efforts of human
thought tended without attaining it, found itself formed and organ-
ized at a privileged moment in history, and thanks to a privileged
genius, in keeping with the habits I have already alluded to of a Provi-
dence as ironic as it is generous. The doctrine equipped by St.
Thomas is possessed of all the properties, highly exceptional, one
may wish for so hazardous a success. It is not the doctrine of one man,
but the whole labor of tbe Fathers of the Church, the seekers of
Greece, and the inspired of Israel (without forgetting the prior stages
crossed by the human mind— nor the contribution made by the Arab
world) which it brings to unity. And certainly not as though to a dead

1 3 0

JACQUES MARITAIN

end! For it is an intelligible organism meant to keep on growing al-
ways, and to extend across the centuries its insatiable thirst for new
prey. It is a doctrine open and without frontiers; open to every reality
wherever it is and every truth from wherever it comes, especially the
new truths which the evolution of culture or science will enable it to
bring out (an achievement presupposing that the mind is able to
transcend for a moment its own conceptual language in order to enter
the conceptual language of another, and to return from this voyage
possessed of the intuition by which this other one has lived). It is,
too, a doctrine open to the various problematics it may see fit to em-
ploy, whether in the course of time it give rise to them itself or
whether it goes to seek them out— while renewing them in the light
of its own fundamental intuitions— in other universes of thought
formed under other heavens . 3 I like to imagine all that could be
brought to us by a Hindu who had become a Christian and a disciple
of St. Thomas, and who would thoroughly know, with a kind of piety
and filial connaturality, the Vedantic schools of thought and their par-
ticular ways of intellectual approach.

And because it is such an open doctrine, a hunger and thirst for
truth that can never be sated, St. Thomas' doctrine is a doctrine in-
definitely progressive , and free of all save the true, free with respect
to itself, to its own imperfections which need correcting and its own

3 The above can be found excellently stated in a page of Olivier Lacombe. “We
will not surprise anyone,” he wrote some years ago, “when we say that in our eyes
St. Thomas Aquinas is, in the age of Doctors, the Doctor par excellence. We think
his doctrine rests on definite foundations, while remaining progressive and faith-
fully open to all the increases of truth in man. We do not pretend that the
disciples of St. Thomas have a right to despise the avenues of discovery, nor the
fruitful zeal, or the contributions to truth of thinkers and schools who do not
accept our premises. On the contrary, we are convinced that it is incumbent upon
us to be that much more attentive to all of this, since we consider these premises
most certain and most comprehensive. We believe that twenty centuries of the
life of human reason in the climate of Christian grace have confirmed it in this
powerful source of truth. Thus hallowed, it affirms itself eminently fruitful. To
the degree that it stands faithful to an intellectual tradition which has been able,
by its fullness and depth, to liberate and give a permanent place to the intelligible
treasures accumulated by Western civilization, we would like to be simply the
useless servants in whom it will carry out, with respect to the great oriental cultures
and the new world in the throes of development, the process of creative assimila-
tion which will reveal to these systems the great human movement their most
authentic meaning, both for themselves and for the entire human race.” Olivier
Lacombe, Sagesse (Paris: Descl^e De Brouwer, 1951), pp. 33-34*

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1 3 1

gaps which need filling, to its formulators and its commentators, and
even to the very master who founded it; I mean, free of him as he
was himself, and ready, like him, for the changes and remodelings re-
quired by a better view of things, and for the enlargings and deepen-
ings demanded by an inquiry that is always going forward. (Good
Lord! I am speaking of the doctrine of St. Thomas such as it was in
him and is in itself— tlje way in which it has sometimes been taught is
another story.)

This doctrine comes from the greatest master in realism— an in-
tegral realism, as aware of the reality of the spirit as of the body— who
ever lived. In St. Thomas himself (although he was obliged, in order
to initiate his pupils, to use the methods of the rational a-b-c), this
doctrine presupposes an inexhaustible center of intuitivity. Its defini-
tions and its great architectural profiles could not have had such
justesse (unfailing accuracy, as of one who has been born with a true
ear and sings in tune), had he not been also the poet to whom we
owe the liturgy of the feast of Corpus Christi. And even as regards his
conclusions, one often feels he had seen them before demonstrating
them.

What I have just called a rational a-b-c— questions, articles, num-
bered objections, the body of the article, numbered responses— is
actually (for intuitivity never suffices) the innocent externals of a
marvelous living network of intellectual rigor (yet simpler when one
reads St. Thomas himself, than his successors had led one to believe)
which taught the modern world what scientia and the uncompromis-
ing honesty of the ways of knowing are.

So much for the properties which even our well-bred contempo-
raries could discern in his doctrine if they deigned to come near it. I
am told that they are repelled by his vocabulary. Why be astonished
that men who understand Hegel, Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre so
well find themselves somewhat terrorized by scholasticist rigor, when
they however know' perfectly well that every science has its technical
vocabulary'? Let us hope that instead of reading the Summa , they
don't run into some Thomist textbook; this time we would sincerely
sympathize with them. But I will come back to this point. For the mo-
ment, I would simply like to note that the properties I have just been
discussing derive from something much more profound: what the
doctrine of St. Thomas is in its purest flame, and about which I can-

132 JACQUES MARITAIN

not avoid trying to say something, however clumsy (this is no rhetori-
cal apology, believe me; the old philosopher knows himself a little
better than that).

THE INTUITION OF BEING
AND THE CONTEMPLATION OF
BEING ITSELF SUBSISTING BY ITSELF

St. Thomas was a theologian, absorbed all his life in sacra doctrina,
and his whole work is essentially a work of theology. It wasn't his job
to say “I'm right" where another man is wrong, but, on the contrary,
to preserve and assimilate the whole truth (with a fair amount of
junk and blunders which had to be weeded out), carried along by an
immense tradition. Hence his sacred respect for all the Fathers— -in
particular for St. Augustine, whose ways of approach, however, were
not his, and consisted more in a loving meditation on the things of
God than in the search for an elucidation strictly grounded in reason.
His relation to St. Augustine is particularly worth examining. “It can
be said of Augustinianism that its substance passed completely into
the Summa” 4 With a good deal of touching up, we need hardly add.
Indeed St. Thomas simply busied himself, in keeping with his office
as a theologian, in bringing to light and saving the truth which was
concealed in such and such a thesis stated in terms he did not accept.
The task which fell to his lot was to save all truths which had been
asserted (often badly asserted) prior to him.

And yet he overturned all the habits and routines of the School-
men, and struck his contemporaries by the astonishing novelty of
his teachings. “A new method," wrote Tocco, “new reasons, new
points of doctrine, a new order of questions." Here was a first-class
aggiornamento.

How is this paradox to be explained? Oh, it's no conjurer's trick. It
is enough that we should think of the extraordinary philosophic
genius of St. Thomas. St. Thomas was a theologian, that is, someone
who uses his reason to acquire some understanding of the mysteries
of faith. And what instrument does such a task call for? A philosophy.

4 Etienne Gilson, op. cit. y pp. 697-698.

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*33

And not any kind of philosophy, but— especially when it is a question
of bringing theology to the state of a genuine scientia or articulated
knowledge grounded in truth— a philosophy which is itself grounded
in truth. In the hands of a theologian, philosophy is only an instru-
ment, an ancilla. But this instrument is very necessary— just as a
rocket is for an astronaut who seeks to explore interplanetary space.
Without the appropriate. instrument, nothing good can be done.

St. Thomas knew' that perfectly well. And he knew, likewise, that
Plato, in the course of the preceding centuries of Christianity, had not
done such a good job of it. Because St. Thomas was a theologian , he
was careful in choosing , and choosing well , his philosopher (here he
was helped by Master Albert and a singular good turn of history— the
introduction of the works of Aristotle into the medieval schools
through the intermediary of the Arabs); and he was not content with
choosing his philosopher; he made him over from head to toe .

It is St. Thomas 7 connection with Aristotle that it is now worth
our while to consider. To say, as so many professors are fond of doing,
that the philosophy of St. Thomas is the philosophy of Aristotle is a
gross error, as Gilson has rightly insisted. The philosophy of St.
Thomas is that of St. Thomas. And it would be as big a mistake to
deny that St. Thomas owes his philosophy to Aristotle, as Dante owes
his language to the fine raconteurs of his country. Such an extraordi-
nary conjunction of swift insight (one must be something of a poet
for that) with ironclad logical rigor may be found in Aristotle too; be-
cause he was, in the world of philosophers, both the greatest realist
and most perspicacious discoverer of the first apperceptions of the in-
tellect, and the strictest instructor in the unforgiving exigencies of a
rigorously rational work, the founder of metaphysics furnished the
principles. He missed, however, those conclusions whose object is the
loftiest and which matter most to us. But St. Thomas did not just
sift out or rectify conclusions— which would, after all, have been a
minor contribution. He was possessed of an incomparably deeper vi-
sion of the principles themselves; his metaphysical intuition impelled
the one he was always to call “the Philosopher’ 7 infinitely beyond
Aristotelianism and the whole of Greek thought.

St. Thomas did not stop short at eus— the “be-ing” (“das
miende ” “i’etanf”) — but went straight to esse, (“Sein” *T6tre”), to
the act of existing. (A pity, I've already observed, that Heidegger

J 34

JACQUES MARITAIN

couldn't see that.) I apologize for having recourse to a technical vo-
cabulary, but for once it is necessary. A metaphysics of the "be-ing"
(“ das seiende ,” " Vetant ”) stops on the way; a metaphysics of the
good or of the one , both of which are passiones entis or "transcenden-
tal properties" of being, remains in an inevitably partial or fragmen-
tary perspective, and is thus put on a wrong track from the outset.
Quite another thing is required. The metaphysics of St. Thomas is
not the metaphysics of Aristotle, because it is the metaphysics of
Aristotle entirely transfigured. In other words, St. Thomas the theo-
logian has, in the service of theology, humbly and without putting in a
claim, brought metaphysical wisdom to the most basic and universal
degree of intuitive grasp possible to reason. A metaphysics of “Sein”
{esse), a metaphysics born from the intuition of the act of existing—
and whose primary object is this primordial and all-embracing intel-
ligible reality— has the capacity to welcome, recognize, honor, set to
rights all that is.

And it is because that faithful servant, human wisdom, instrument-
ally used— the metaphysics of St. Thomas (not that of Aristotle)
—had the intuition of being and saw in esse her chief object, that the
higher wisdom— the theology of St. Thomas— was able to contem-
plate in the trans-luminous obscurity of the mysteries of Faith the
Uncreated Cause of being as Being itself subsisting by itself , ipsum
Esse per se subsisten , to which the handmaid had already lifted her
eye as toward her ultimate end.

"To conceive God," writes Gilson, "as the Act of being pure and
subsisting by itself, cause and end of all other beings, is by the same
token to give oneself a theology that can do justice to whatever is
true in other theologies, just as the metaphysics of esse has what is
needed to do justice to whatever is true in other philosophies. Be-
cause it includes all of them, this theology of the uncreated Act of
being, or of the God whose proper name is I Am, is as true as all of
them together and truer than any one of them taken separately. Here
is, if I am not mistaken, the secret reason for the choice the Church
has made of St. Thomas Aquinas as her Common Doctor." 5

As for the metaphysics which supports such a theology, and with-
out which the latter would not have been (it is this metaphysics
which, from the side of reason, provided the indispensable spark), let

5 “Trois logons sur 1c Thomisme,” op. cit ., p. 700.

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*35

us cite further the lines of our friend: “For those who live on it, the
metaphysics of the Common Doctor accepted in its fullness is a
ne plus ultra for the understanding. At once unsurpassable in its
own right and inexhaustible in its consequences, this metaphysics is
the human understanding itself in its permanent work of rational in-
terpretation of man and the universe /' 6

That brings us to a^ final consideration which deserves a word or
two, however nonsensical this may seem to those who think (if one
dare use the word with respect to them) that the only conceivable
capacity of being up-to-date is that with which topical gazettes, stop-
press news, or news reels are endowed, let us say that only such
actualiteSy as they say in French, have the attribute of up-to-dateness.
Well, we are thus led to consider briefly the relation of St. Thomas
with time. Please pardon me for being myself out-of-date: there is an
up-to-dateness which, while bound to manifest itself in time, is, of
itself, above time, that's the up-to-dateness of truth. The Doctrine
of St. Thomas, being essentially grounded in truth, and therefore, as I
have already pointed out, open to the whole future, has, of itself, a
supra-temporal up-to-dateness.

Alas, I just said that the up-to-dateness of truth, which is, of itself,
above time, must manifest itself in time. In other words, the doc-
trine of St. Thomas was bound to manifest in time— after St. Thomas
—its supra-temporal truth. If it fell short of this somewhat too often,
it is not the fault of St. Thomas, who was dead. It’s the fault of his
disciples, for which w r e arc paying today. But this needs looking into
more closely and I will come back to it later.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF ST. THOMAS

Another fault of St. Thomas' disciples (I am speaking of “disci-
ples” in general— with certain exceptions, of course) lay in not striv-
ing to sift out, for its own sake, the philosophy of St. Thomas, by
expounding it in its own nature and with its own gait, which by defi-
nition have nothing theological about them. (In him, it was present
in the most real and deepest manner, but as underlying his theology
and enveloped by it.) St. Thomas’ disciples have, to be sure, spoken a
6 lbid. y p. 707.

136 JACQUES M ARITAIN

good deal about Thomist philosophy, and have taught it, in magiste-
rial commentaries, courses, and textbooks where, more often than
not, they were content to pick up, in the theological exposition of
St. Thomas, the philosophical substance which can be found there —
brought there to the light of theology and enveloped in theology: a
substance splendidly rich, but all theologized in the use St. Thomas
had made of it. Once one had extracted this substance from the theo-
logical exposition of the master, one had only to trace off the formu-
las, often the very order of exposition, to offer in handsome syllogisms
some philosophical thesis or other, nay, “the philosophic doctrine”
of the Angel of the Schools . 7

This “Thomist philosophy” was no theology, since they had with-
drawn it from the light proper to theology to transfer it into the king-
dom of reason using only its natural powers. Still less was it a philos-
ophy, since it remained structured after the theological treatise from
which it emerged, and possessed neither the gait and method, nor the
light characteristic of philosophical research. Without the character-
istic light of theology, and that proper to philosophical research, it
had practically no light at all. The via inventionis or way of discovery,
which is essential to philosophy, was ignored; so too, was the pro-
cedure proper to philosophy, which has its starting point in experi-
ence and a prolonged intercourse with the world and with sensible
reality. The characteristic atmosphere in which philosophy takes
shape, which is the atmosphere of curiosity where it dwells with its
fellow sciences, and from which it raises itself to the purer and more
rarefied atmosphere of what comes meta ta physica , was equally ab-
sent. Most important was the absence of the light from which philos-
ophy originates, which is intuitive before being and in order to be
discursive, and is transferred point by point all during the reasoning
process.

Leaving in the oblivion they deserve a number of more or less medi-
ocre textbooks, let us choose instead a work of great merit, drawn up

7 There were certainly, as I have observed, exceptions, although rare to my
knowledge. When it comes to overall expositions which have genuine philosophic
value, I will name here old Kleutgen, from whom, at one time, I benefited, and in
particular two excellent books: P£re Garrigou-Lagrange’s La Philosophic de Vetre
et le Sens commun, and Gilson's The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy.

It is Brentano, a somewhat aberrant disciple, who in the last century had taken
the most remarkable initiative; but, because he neglected what mattered most, it
took a sharp turn with him, and a very bad turn in Germany, with those who made
what they had received from him veer in the direction of phenomenology.

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’37

in the most precise and conscientious fashion. We will find a perfect
model of the genre— this kind of Thomist philosophy— in the E/e-
merrta philosophiae aristotelico -thomist icae of the good Pere Gredt.
It is a precious repository of information, which we have only to con-
sult should we want to know what St. Thomas thought on some
given point. But how it was ever possible to have worked out such a
conclusion, that's another st.qry. We have in our hands an aerolite
which has fallen from the sky, with everything we need to know writ-
ten on it.

Given a chance to reveal its own nature, Thomistic philosophy ex-
hibits the gait and demeanor characteristic of all philosophy; a de-
meanor and gait fully at liberty to confront the real. The philosopher
swears fidelity to no person, nor any school — not even, if he is a
Thomist, to the letter of St. Thomas and every article of his teaching.
He is sorely in need of teachers and of a tradition, but in order for
them to teach him to think when he looks at things (which is not as
simple as all that), and not, as is the case with the theologian, so that
he can assume the whole of this tradition into his thought. Once this
tradition has instructed him, he is free of it and makes use of it for
his own work. In this sense, he is alone in the face of being; for his job
is to think over that which is.

As for the method he must follow, it is obvious that the state-
ment of problems, the research, and the discovery 7 come before sys-
temization. Even, before he undertakes direct research (and the
struggle with things, and discussion, and controversy, and finally the
doctrinal synthesis toward which he tends, all of which go to make up
his characteristic work) the most normal way for approach for him is
by historical inquiry— yet not simply historical, for he already has, to
be sure, his own idea and perhaps his system of reference in the back
of his mind (and history alone is not enough to bear judgment); his
most normal way of approach is historical and critical examination of
what has been thought before him. (Here too we can take lessons
from Aristotle.) This method of procedure is merely introductory,
but it is very necessary both for teaching and for research.

Finally, the root principle on which everything hangs for the phil-
osopher, assuming he is a Thomist, and a metaphysician, is that in-
tellectual intuition of being about which I have already had a good
deal to say. Here I would like to make two remarks. The first con-
cerns this intuition itself. It has, as I observed earlier, nothing in com-

i3§ JACQUES MARITAIN

mon with Bergsonian intuition, and it presupposes a more strenuous,
at least quite resolute intellectualism. Nor does it have anything in
common with any kind whatsoever of charismatic intuition. It takes
place in the heart of the most natural exercise of the intellect, and
its only charisma is its simplicity — the mysterious simplicity of intel-
lection. There is nothing simpler than to think I am , I exist , this blade
of grass exists; this gesture of the land, this captivating smile that the
next instant will hurry away, exist; the world exists. The all-important
thing is for such a perception to sink deeply enough within me that
my awareness of it will strike me some day sharply enough (at times,
violently) to stir and move my intellect up to that very world of
preconscious activity, beyond any word or formula, and with no
assignable boundaries, which nourishes everything within it. Such a
descent to the very depths of the soul is doubtless something given ,
not worked out — given by the natural grace of the intellectual nature.

And then, if luck should take a hand, and if the eye of conscious-
ness, sufficiently accustomed to the half-light, should penetrate a lit-
tle, like a thief, this limbo of the preconscious, it can come about
that this simple I am will seem like a revelation in the night— a se-
cret revelation which will awaken echoes and surprises on all sides and
give a hint of the inexhaustible ampleness it permits one to attain.

And there can be instances, as I noted in the foregoing chapter,
where this experience is genuinely present in someone who takes no
notice of it, either because it remains involved in the more or less
superficial layers of consciousness, or because, as with children, it
takes place only in the preconscious of the spirit.

It is in a judgment (or in a preconscious act equivalent to an un-
formulated judgment), and in a judgment of existence, that the in-
tellectual intuition of being occurs. The philosophical concept of the
actus essendi , of the act of existence, will only come later. And the
more profound and pure the intuition, the more accurate and com-
prehensive (barring accidents) will be the conceptualization of the
various discoveries philosophy will be able to make by scrutinizing
the real in the light of this absolutely fundamental principle . 8

8 “The more vital and central the intuition, the more chances its conceptualiza-
tion has to express it uprightly; the more it is limited, the more conceptualization
risks betraying it/' writes Louis Gardet (on the subject of primary intuitions in
general), in his penetrating study, “Plurality of Philosophies and Unity of Truth,”
Nova et Vetera, IV, 1965, p. 268.

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*39

My second observation bas to do with Bergson. I have stated that
the intellectual intuition of being has nothing in common with
Bergsonian intuition, which was spoiled by a quite accidental, I think,
anti-intellectualism, and which Bergson described as a kind of inef-
fable sympathy demanding a torsion of the will upon itself. Further-
more, this Bergsonian intuition did not focus directly on being, but
only on duration which is but one of the aspects of being r and which
served him as a kind of substitute for being. Having said that, one
must add that through the experience of duration it was actually
being, esse , which, without being aware of it, he attained. In any case,
Thomism is greatly indebted to him; for if the intuition of being has
nothing to do with Bergsonian intuition, it is nevertheless thanks to
the impact of the latter, and of Bergson's metaphysical genius, on
modem thought (Pere J.-H. Nicolas observes that the “real knowl-
edge" of Blondel also played its part in the matter) that contempo-
rary Thomists have at last recognized (not without opposition, nor
yet unanimously; there are not that many metaphysicians in the
world) the essential and absolutely rockbottom importance of the in-
tuition of being in their own philosophy . 9 From this point of view,
one ought to consider Bergson a great liberator.

To wind up my reflections on Thomistic philosophy restored to its
proper nature as philosophy, let me say that in my judgment, even
though, in this last third of the twentieth century, it does not enjoy
the favors of fashion, it is actually in pretty good shape. In saying
this, I am thinking of its intrinsic development and of the various
kinds of research it has stimulated. I have in mind particularly the
progress which is owed to it (thanks to the investigations of Olivier
Lacombe and Louis Gardet) in the understanding of Oriental thought
(and a good understanding, too, with its representatives) and in an
authentic theory (the only one) of natural mystique. Nevertheless,

9 I am pleased to be able to invoke here the authority of the Rev. Jean-Hervd
Nicolas. See his remarkable article in the Revue Thomiste (1947-1) “The Intui-
tion of Being and the First Principles”; where he notes, in particular, the important
text of St. Thomas on metaphysical knowledge (in Boet. de Trin., q. 6, a.i.) in
which the word iniellcctus must be translated as "intellectual intuition.” His
conclusion is that by obliging 'Iliomists “to become more keenly aw^are of this
ovcrrly neglected aspect of their metaphysics, the new philosophies which have
developed alongside of theirs . . . have rendered them an immense service from
which, along with Thomism, Christian thought in general has profited. These new
philosophies have awakened them from their abstractive slumber.”

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JACQUES MARITAIN

we must admit that at the moment it is suffering from a great lack; it
has not yet re-elaborated the philosophy of nature which is one of its
indispensable ingredients. It’s no consolation to tell oneself that the
whole of contemporary thought is afflicted with the same lack; nor
that the scientists, whose very achievements have confronted them
with so many problems (and whom no intellectual counterfeit
money, moreover, can fool for very long) are clamoring the loudest,
though in vain, for this philosophy of nature, which stubbornly re-
fuses to appear. As for Thomism, its philosophy of nature has needed
reshaping for a long time. The task (a vanished dream of my youth)
is certainly not impossible, but it is difficult in the highest degree. Yet
I am confident it will be done. It would require a team in which
scientists and philosophers would work together, and which would be
led by a competent philosopher. Such a philosopher seems to be im-
probable? I don't think so, his name is on the tip of my tongue . 10

Even then, a fair amount of patience will be required. What will
also be needed— and here is the diabolus in musica— is an uncanny
sense of the requirements of that “subtle and delicate" art which
consists in distinguishing in order to unite. I am not about to launch
out here into the intricate problems of epistemology. I will simply
note that the sciences of nature, all of them, have a hold on the real
insofar only as it can be observed (or within the limits of the observa-
ble). Although very far from forming a whole company of the same
tenor from the epistemological point of view, they are all, therefore,
equally dependent upon an intellection of an “empiriological" order
(whether simply empiriological or empirio-mathematical ). 11 They
are “sciences of phenomena." The philosophy of nature, by contrast,
is dependent upon a type of intellection which, through the observa-
ble, or through signs apprehended in experience, attains the real in its
very being, and must be called an intellection of an ontological order
(the most natural kind of intellection, to tell the truth; the other
kind requires a more particular sort of mental training and discipline) .
The functioning of thought, and the conceptual vocabulary, then, are
typically different in the sciences of nature and in the philosophy of
nature. The error of antiquity was to believe that the functioning of
thought and the conceptual lexicon proper to the philosophy of na-

10 The author was thinking of Claude Tresmontant. [Trans.]

11 I am using here the vocabulary of The Degrees of Knowledge.

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1 4 1

ture extended to the sciences of nature. The error of certain modem
scientists, insofar as they are in search of a philosophy, is to believe
that the kind of thinking and conceptual vocabulary proper to the
sciences of nature can serve to build a philosophy of nature. We arc
faced here with two different keyboards. If a Thomistic philosophy of
nature should some day take shape, as I hope, it will only be by hav-
ing a clear awareness of this distinction. It is first and foremost
through such an avVareness (even more than from the novelty of the
scientific material employed, completely transformed by the advent
of modern science) that it will be a philosophy of nature entirely re-
newed (although retaining the same philosophical perspective) with
respect to that of St. Thomas and his age. In the team which will
work at such a renewal, each man must be able to use (with relative
ease) two typewriters, one equipped with a certain keyboard, the
other with a quite different keyboard— one that his discipline has
made familiar to him, and the other which, as a man of good will, he
will have to leam how to use rather late in the day . 12 The philoso-
phers should know how to use, at least as amateurs, the machine
equipped with the scientific keyboard, and the scientists the one
equipped with the philosophic keyboard. May the angels of true
knowledge be there to help them!

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

Between faith and reason, as between grace and nature, there is an
essential distinction ; and one sometimes tends to lose sight of it.
(Much more often today because we are too dull, now that we have
been so well instructed, to understand what to distinguish really
means. With dialectic and the elimination of “natures” in behalf of
becoming, isn't it as plain as day that everything is different because
everything is the same, and that the more thresholds there are to be
crossed along the discontinuous, the more the continuity of the uni-
versal movement which goes on by itself becomes obvious and
axiomatic?)

But between faith and reason, as between grace and nature, there is
no separation. One tends sometimes to overlook that, too (much

12 Sec, at the end of the book, Appendix 3, Short Epistemological Digression.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

more often in the old days; quite a few of our ancestors were as dull
as we, and once two concepts were seated on the chairs of a reliable
distinction, they found it too tiring to raise those concepts from their
seats and make them embrace one another).

Whatever the dullness of our ancestors and of a good many of us,
things are that way, and so is life: there is distinction without separa-
tion.

Reason has its own domain, and faith hers. But reason can enter
the domain of faith by bringing there its need to ask questions, its
desire to discover the internal order of the true, and its aspiration to
wisdom— that's what happens with theology. And faith can enter the
domain of reason, bringing along the help of a light and a truth which
are superior, and which elevate reason in its own order— that is what
happens with Christian philosophy. (Conventional words like "Chris-
tian philosophy" and "Christian politics" are rather annoying, for they
seem— people like to be misled— to clericalize a thing secular by na-
ture, and to pin a denominational label on it. "Philosophy in faith"
sounds a little better perhaps than "Christian philosophy," but also
lends itself to misinterpretation. In the last analysis, whatever word
you use presupposes some intelligence in the hearer.)

Let us leave aside the somewhat incongruous name by which the
Christian Scientists are designated. Apart from this rather odd sect,
one could not possibly speak of "Christian science," because science is
concerned only with phenomena, and the latter, as Pierre Termier
said, "don't look Christian," any more than does the eye or the micro-
scope which observes them. But philosophy is concerned with what is
beneath phenomena. And faith, with He who is. Metaphysics is con-
cerned with prime truths, and faith with others more prime still.
Why should it be normal for them to ignore one another?

After all, a Christian can be a philosopher. And if he believes
that, in order to philosophize, he should lock his faith up in a strong-
box— that is, should cease being a Christian while he philosophizes
— he is maiming himself, which is no good (all the more as philoso-
phizing takes up the better part of his time) . He is also deluding him-
self, for these kinds of strongboxes have always poor locks. But if,
while he philosophizes, he does not shut his faith up in a strongbox,
he is philosophizing in faith, willy-nilly. It is better that he should be
aware of it.

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M3

When one becomes aware of it, then one is forced to admit that
there is a “Christian philosophy/' It is philosophy, and its work is a
work of reason ; but it is in a better position to perform its work of
reason. Not only does faith place in our path certain signals (“Dan-
ger: Winding Roads,” etc.), thanks to which our little saloon-car runs
less risks. But, above all, faith can help us from within to overcome
allurements and irrational djcams to which, without assistance
coming from a soifrce superior to reason, we would be disposed to
yield. In all honesty, then, given the general conditions, hardly very
promising for reason, in which our fallen nature finds itself, the state
or “situation” of Christian philosophy should be regarded as the most
desirable state or “situation” for philosophy among the children of
Adam. Which doesn’t mean that a Christian philosopher cannot err
as seriously as any other— faith may cause philosophic minds insuf-
ficiently robust to run other risks. Nay more, the remnants of ances-
tral faith (but then it is a question of philosophies which falsely
proclaim themselves Christian, or are no longer Christian at all)
throw into most serious dangers strong-minded rationalist doctrinari-
ans, who fancy, like Hegel and some others after his pontificate, they
have to assume the whole burden of old theologies now supposedly
dispossessed.

St. Thomas had a sound mind, and it was he who really taught us to
distinguish without ever separating. If we think of the various traits of
his philosophy I have been trying to recall, and of how, in building
this philosophy for himself, he transfigured the metaphysics of
Aristotle — with no intention of curbing reason before faith, but in or-
der to goad reason into a better control of its own realm, and a de-
cisive awareness of the absolutely basic principle of the opus
philosophicum — perhaps we will begin to suspect that the philosophy
of St. Thomas (and especially his metaphysics) is not merely a
Christian philosophy, but is the Christian philosophy par excellence.

People who, for all their intelligence, are inclined to believe that
everything repeats itself, are naturally tempted to grow impatient
with the privilege thus conceded to a philosophy about which, more-
over, they know little or nothing. Shouldn’t theology do with the
modern philosophers what St. Thomas did with Aristotle? That’s
obvious, isn’t it? One hears this inept question today on all sides. It
is inept for a good many reasons. The first is that to do with Hegel

M4

JACQUES MARITAIN

what St. Thomas did with Aristotle would involve, in the first place,
taking on the job of making over Hegel from head to toe. Just let
them try it, they will break their teeth. One can make over from top to
bottom a philosopher who, while he fell short of his goal, was well on
his way, i.e., was truly in the axis to look at the real. With a philoso-
pher (ideosopher) who is only in the axis of the Idea, it's surely not
so easy; especially if this ideosopher regards himself as the summit of
the whole of human thought and the revealer of ultimate wisdom.
Nor is it any simple matter with a crowd of philosophers (ideosophers
who, unaware of any tradition other than that of their immediate
predecessors in a given line, offer us only individual attempts and,
like a good many of our contemporary thinkers, grow increasingly re-
signed to vanishing into thin air like fireflies that glow for but an in-
stant. There have, in fact, actually been attempts at Cartesian theo-
logies, Malebranchian theologies, Kantian theologies and Hegelian
theologies, and they didn't shed much light within the Church. For
the time being, it is with any run-of-the-mill kind of phenomenologi-
cal product that Our creative geniuses are working. It would be no
small job for theology, assuming it continued to believe itself charged
with teaching men how to gain some rational understanding of the
eternal Truth revealed in faith— to be forced to re-design its models
every season like manufacturers of motorcars.

But none of this has much effect on the clerics and the friars, or in-
deed on the innocent laymen who are at grips with the question: why
not repeat with the thinkers of today what St. Thomas did with
Aristotle, so as to be rid of those two spoil-sports? To tell the truth,
the matter is more serious than it seems. Let us try to discern what,
fundamentally (and unconsciously, doubtless, for a good many) lies
concealed beneath this question. It is what, with a completely changed
idea of theology, one could call a fideism gone astray. I will sum up
in three points what I mean by this.

Primo. According to this fideism, theology is not, as we have been
led to believe for so long, a rational knowledge through which human
reason humbly penetrates, as far as it can (and always progressing, as
it should), the Truth which came out from the mouth of God in the
mysteries of faith. For not only does faith transcend reason, but rea-
son is powerless to do a genuine work of knowledge (that is, a work
of rational knowledge solidly enough established— on a rock— to go

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

M5

on progressing forever) by scrutinizing in some fashion, in their eter-
nal and intrinsic depths, the truths which faith conveys to us and
whose custody belongs to the Church. The theologian, however, lifts
his eyes toward faith.

Secundo. Does this mean that in order to contemplate these mys-
teries, he already is in the mystical transforming union? No, ap-
parently not. He is a $ehplar v jand, even while lifting his eyes toward
faith, he makes use of reason, and thus also of philosophy (and the
treasures of an erudition as vast and caviling as possible). But since
faith is supposed to be, of itself, averse to reason, and to a work of
knowledge accomplished by means of reason, the theologian can and
should, in looking at faith, make use of any philosophy whatever, once
it is that of his times. For it isn't at all a matter of understanding
better, thanks to reason, or of managing in some way (always and in-
definitely progressive) to know the things (immutably true) faith
reveals to us. It is a matter (what a much humbler attitude for reason
to have, isn't it?) of reinterpreting for each age, by means of the phi-
losophy of the age, faith itself, with the things (mutably true) it
brings us to know. This time, the handmaid becomes mistress. And
the original fideism of theology conceived in this way is taken in tow
by a dynamic philosophism which gives theology the bliss to which it
aspires: to be a child of its times. What better fate could one ask for
a theology essentially “pastoral"? (The blame is not mine if this ven-
erable word has been prostituted by so many zealous journalists.)

Tertio. Why then all the fuss? Because, while the object of theology
continues to remain the truth of the mysteries of faith (but a truth
henceforth mutable in its intelligible value and meaning, at times
mythical if necessary)— and also, of course, the truths of erudition
(absolute, these ones, if only for the moment)— nevertheless, the
ultimate purpose of theology, finally, has become no longer Truth but
Efficacy. Here we are at last. Thus it is that with the new notion of
theology which underlies the grand question I have irreverently,
though not unreasonably, described as inept, we are dealing with a
fideism gone astray.

At first glance, this analysis may seem somewhat harsh. But if one
gives it a little serious thought, one will find it hard to challenge its
accuracy.

Theology should be of its time, yes, that's true, but in an entirely

146 JACQUES MARITAIN

different sense, and provided one preserves it or re-establishes it in its
very’ essence: an effort to understand, as far as one can, and to connect
together in a rational whole the truths of faith, in view of that su-
preme end which is Truth, not Efficacy. Besides we must also bear in
mind that the object of any knowledge is one with its end.

“For us to repeat what Thomas Aquinas did” means, in reality, “to
descend once more from revealed truth to the philosophies of our
time in order to enlighten them, purify them,” and ransom the truths
they hold captive. “An immense task,” as Gilson 13 wrote, “but one
in which Thomas Aquinas has gone before us and can still show us
the way.”

☆

In this immense task, he can of course show us the way, provided
we go forward with him. And this is dreadfully urgent. This is one of
the most necessary renewals called for by the true fire that the Holy
Spirit has kindled, and with which the flame throwers of the Council
have disturbed so many slumbers. A few Thomists did not wait to set
out en route (a small flock, yet fairly robust indeed, and where young
searchers are not lacking, but, as always, operarii pauci , operatives are
few). The fact remains that if one wishes to be led by someone, one
can't afford to stay put, and when it comes to this particular task, it is
true that Thomists have too often remained comfortably seated in
their magisterial chairs.

I don't much relish talking about this because, when one speaks in
general terms, as I have been forced to do in this book, it is impossible
to avoid a certain amount of injustice. I'm not much, but what would
I be without the undeserved luck of having been taught by masters
like Pere Clerissac, Pere Dehau and Pere Garrigou-Lagrange, and,
among those still with us whose names I will omit out of respect for
their modesty, a humble Cardinal to whom I owe everything I know
about the Church, and who would still be an unassuming priest and
seminary professor (he still is a seminary professor) but for the per-
spicacity of Pope Paul VI?

Why then should I go out of my way to pick a quarrel with the
Thomists? Because the old peasant spares nothing, that's why. Espe-

13 Op. cit.j p. 706

Til E PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

M7

ciallv not the immobilism which, since the canonization of St.
Thomas (prior to that, his doctrine had, of course, been attacked and
slandered by his brothers at Oxford and by the bishop of Paris,
Etienne Tempier), has allowed Thomism to become learnedly ossi-
fied.

If one speaks ill of the past, especially in the precious and ungrate-
ful world of today, there is a certain fear of being what Sartre calls
un salaud , a dirty dog. Yet we must recognize that glory has its dan-
gers, and so docs the lofty mission of recognized defenders of the
truth. A great School, with celebrated teachers and renowned uni-
versities, was hard put to maintain the studious humility which had
played so essential a role in the life and work of St. Thomas. The
doctoral cap which St. Thomas set so little store by soon became a
sacred emblem, crowning teachers whose word was law. (Yet they
were, after all, only professors; and how much good it might do them
—as, in principle, it would every professor— to go every now and then
and refresh their experience of reality by milking cows or by pushing a
plow. )

All that I just said is in no way concerned with the matter of per-
sonal humility. It is the office to be filled which knew too well its own
greatness. To be in the retinue of the queen of sciences includes of
necessity lofty duties, and it is only fitting that a Master of theology
be penetrated by these feelings. I once had occasion to meet a most
worthy theologian, plain dealing, childlike, humble and charitable,
and who was not lacking in a sense of humor, about whom I was told
a good story. In a course on moral theology (on the question of the
lesser evil, I suspect) an example suggested itself to him. “Let us im-
agine,” he told his students (his skill in mimicry used to delight
them), “that I am on a ship which is about to go down and there is
only one lifeboat. Naturally, I say to myself: it's up to me to sacrifice
myself, for tire man standing next to me is the father of a family.

. . . But I think it over for a moment, and it occurs to me: I am a
Master in theology, valde utilis sanctae Ecclesiae ! Then, it is a matter
of duty', isn't it, to get into the lifeboat before the others. . .

This story is told only in jest (but it is true). The haughtiness with
which a great lord of the mind like Cajetan addresses “apprentices” re-
mains inscribed in his Commentary on the Sumirui. When one's
function is to teach the loftiest wisdom, it is difficult to resist the

148 JACQUES M ARITAIN

temptation to believe that until you have spoken, nothing has been
said. As a dispositio animae , this is hardly conducive to restless in-
quiry, or progress, or the wish to examine the feeble efforts of the
common herd. I number among theologians a good many dear friends
of whom exactly the opposite would have to be said; their humility,
even their “professional” humility, has won my admiration. But the
history of the brotherhood gives one no reason to think that such has
generally been the case. The most curious aspect of the matter is that
those who today are throwing out St. Thomas and the rest, and nour-
ishing themselves with the bread of existentialism or demythization
in order to come up with hypotheses in the grand manner, seem to
have inherited from their ancestors only an instinctive persuasion of
the professional superiority of their own pronouncements.

There were, in the past, a good many excuses for this. I like to
think back to the age of the great jousts and controversies when it was
up to the Thomists to trade blows with the Scotists or Suarezians.
These nice tournaments made it possible to safeguard precious
truths and to deepen doctrine (sometimes in hardening it, or making
it labyrinthine). Those men knew their business. How pleased I am
with that Dominican— his name, I think, was Thomas de Lemos—
who, in the course of the celebrated debates de auxiliis held in the
presence of the Pope, so ardently flung his arms about scientia
media that he had to be shut up in a glass cage. Yet, the fact remains
that scholastic disputations, oratorical argumentation, the play of
concepts, the victorious art of distinguo, and didacticism gained the
upper hand so well that Thomists made little advance in their own
line, hardly daring to change classical positions when the need arose,
as St. Thomas would have done had he been present. As a result,
when modern philosophy and modern science began (and continued)
to make a noise in the world, most of St. Thomas' disciples remained
almost deaf to these wretched murmurs, except to refute them. (And
however necessary that may be, it's not refutation I'm concerned with
here.) Gradually the Thomism of the schools lost that openness, that
feeling for research and progress, that zeal to go to the rescue of
truths wherever they were held captive, that commerce with the. real
and with experience, which quickened it in its original source— and,
above all, that intuitivity which is the life of its life (this is verified in
theology too; for although theology, unlike metaphysics with the

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

M9

actusessendi , lacks an intellectual intuition of its prime object, it has,
nevertheless— to advance step by step, as reason does, in the mysteries
of Being itself subsisting by itself— the light of faith, which in the ex-
perience of contemplation quickens the theologian, as well as any
contemplative soul, in a more piercing, almost intuitive fashion: so
that the sacra doctrina might actually become what it is de iure , "a
certain impression in us of the divine knowledge, quae est una et
simplex omnium ,” \vhich knows all things in its perfect unity and
simplicity ). 14

The loss of potential due to this loss of ever-alert intuitivity is the
underlying cause of the baneful deterioration which has taken place
in the direction of notionalism and a fixation upon abstract essences
(hence, a metaphysics unmindful of the intuition of being) for which
Gilson is doubtless right in regarding Cajetan as particularly respon-
sible. (It is not without a certain ruefulness that I admit this since,
in other respects, I’m an admirer of this incomparable reasoner; he
was, alas, a partisan of Aristotle in the very sense St. Thomas was not,
and yet for all of that, a theologian of extraordinary power. But the
Commentator with whom I fell in love— without being afraid to de-
part from him whenever I have to— isn't Cajetan, it's John of Saint-
Thomas, w r ho, despite his interminable sentences and his charming
fondness for logical technicalities, was himself basically an intuitive.)

It is hardly surprising that Thomism should finally have entered
into the “abstractive slumber" denounced by Pere Jean-Herve Nico-
las. What can one say of the prudent ignorance in which theologian
and exegcte have so long remained in respect of one another? Or of
the isolation in which our masters remained for so long regarding the
new conceptions of the world with which science, and especially its
popularizers, captured the attention of the vulgum pecus ? It helps
explain a little how so many of out intellectuals still imagine that
whoever takes interest in Thomism is stepping out of our age.

What’s more, if one were to turn, no longer with special reference
to the kind of teaching in which the Thomists too often indulged (its
lacks were particularly serious in proportion to the living treasure it

14 As P£rc Curasao wrote, ‘The joys and vital energy which theology dispenses
arc incomparable., because this knowledge is nothing else than the baptismal
iUumination become conscious of itself and progressive.’' Le Mystfoe de iEglise
(Paris: ed. du Ccrf, 1917), p. 6.

150 JACQUES MARITAIN

should have transmitted), but to the ordinary teaching which, too
often also — this time in bland doctrinal indifference — prevailed in
Christian schools, things would appear still worse. At this point I
remember that pious offense to the intellect, the Latin textbook of
theology of the venerable M. Tanquerey.

It is all that that needs changing— and is in the process of changing
at top speed. That is where the true new fire should bring its flame.

☆

All that should change. But it risks changing for the worse.

In actual fact, the result of all the setbacks I have enumerated has
been an even greater misfortune. The immense work of discernment
and integration, of interpretation, reconstruction, purification and
liberation, which the adventures of thought and culture in the mod-
ern age called for and which needed to be done within the truth — al-
ways up-to-date by nature but above time, and demanding to be
manifested in time— of the great doctrinal wisdom St. Thomas gave
to the world, this immense work has not been done by his disciples . 15
Thus it was left to theologians of good will but unsteady head, to
carry out, instead of this work, a completely different one— designed
not to save captive truths, but to try to adapt them to the very thing
which holds them captive. Such a work is performed under the spur
of the moment, and accomplished outside the ever up-to-date (but
above time) truth of a doctrinal wisdom which they either don't
know, or scorn, or betray, by following the petticoats of any philoso-
phy dressed out in the latest fashions, which becomes their servant-
mistress. As if an ambitious and phenomenologist ancilla, which is
positive of knowing more than they, could help them do anything
but transform theology into a kind of exegesis, at once bold (why, of
course) and modestly conjectural, of the truths in which our fore-

15 There is a certain amount of injustice in putting it this way, but, as I have
already said, I am speaking in general terms — leaving aside a number of Thomist
scholars who in the course of the last century have shed light on a good many
problems or opened up a number of new lines of investigation. I would have
preferred to name names, but I don’t wish to seem to be drawing up a list of
honors. Besides, the scholars to whom I refer (particularly Pere Schwalm) con-
tributed more to the deepening of Thomistic thought than to the work we are
discussing. It is in exegesis that such an effort has been undertaken, in particular
by the admirable Pere Lagrange.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

* 5 *

fathers believed, duly reinterpreted and provided with a new set of
clothes, without forgetting beret, spectacles, and mutinous look, so as
not to appear at a disadvantage in international conferences and col-
loquies where modern mentality makes itself comfortable.

To the foregoing reflections on the faults and omissions which, in
the past, have gradually encrusted Thomism, and the price we are
paying for them today, one could add similar ones on a number of
other subjects, and,* gfnefally Speaking, on the progressive sclerosis
which, in the course of recent centuries, has afflicted the mores, if I
may say so, or the ways and customs of Christian thought. The main
question had to do with the practical aftereffects of ideas upon hu-
man behavior; Churchmen's prudence played a great part in the
matter. A sacred trust and venerable traditions of exalted wisdom, al-
though always at work wherever there were blood and life, gradually
found themselves half embedded in routine, narrowness of mind, and
a kind of vigorous and suspicious refusal to think which served as
preventive medicine for a host of threatening contagions. The in-
evitable result was to turn the Christian people in upon itself (many
kept alive wonderful riches of faith and piety, but many also sank in
indifference or an unfathomable ignorance) and to divorce, not
Christianity, certainly, nor the Church, but the mass of average
churchgoers and their ordinary concerns, from the world of culture,
with its nice progress in shamelessness and the experience off un-
reason, but its genuine progress, too, in the experience of beauty,
poetry, intelligence, freedom of mind, and the knowledge of man.

Leon Bloy, Bernanos, Mauriac, each from his own standpoint, have
said all that needs to be said on this subject. In spite of everything, it
had become the custom to look at all this with a kind of resigned
indulgence, as the inevitable weaknesses of every great human insti-
tution, or the unavoidable squalor and routine of departments which
prepare the equipment for some heroic venture. One lost sight a little
too much of the foot-sloggers and the poor common people whom
the toil and worry of earning a living kept prisoners of the force of
habit and who did not read the great mystics. One forgot, above all,
that it wasn’t a case of a human institution or a military venture. The
Church was well aware of it, and she didn’t forget the common peo-
ple either. Everybody was surprised by the Council because everybody
is little concerned with what the Church is. She has said at last that

152 JACQUES MARITAIN

she is fed up with routines and unnatural isolation. She has marked
out the road of renewal and liberation. And she will manage well
enough, have no fear.

The fact remains that, when worm-eaten barriers begin to snap, a
horde of bewildered souls are quick to take advantage of it and dis-
perse in nature— or “culture,” and blithely follow the prevailing
winds, in other words, the lastest fashion. This too is inevitable. And
if we are seeing right now a good many outlandish things, and a curi-
ous unleashing of Christian tomfoolery (it's the same old tomfool-
ery, only turned upside down) where a certain number of priests and
consecrated people take care not to forget their role as leaders—
“firemen who catch fire,” as Degas used to say of certain painters —
we should look back over our shoulder, with a little suitably disillu-
sioned wisdom, and recall the gross errors and omissions of a not-too-
distant past (it is mainly a case of the nineteenth century) for which
we are now paying the price.

Having said that, we are forced to admit that the spectacle enjoyed
by our contemporaries has a good many questionable allurements. It
is not merely the brilliant theological work already alluded to that
they behold without a murmur (save for compliments). They have
also to contemplate the work of reconstruction expected on all sides
of statistical and scientific devices, and, first of all, to admire the
general substitution of techniques— especially the psychological—
which are now flourishing, not only for pious practices which are
more or less obsolete, and the routines and antiseptic precautions I
have already mentioned, but even for the traditions (still alive, in
spite of hardening of the arteries) of exalted wisdom which I have
also mentioned, and especially the humble and noble disciplines of
what is still occasionally referred to as the spiritual life.

Some of my friends are afflicted with this phenomenon. There are,
moreover, a good many things that the Chinese proverb I invented
as an epigraph to this book advises us never to take too seriously.
For my part, I plead guilty to being particularly struck by the comic
aspect of the spectacle, which it seems permissible to poke a little fun
at. In spite of everything, it is very funny to imagine countless Chris-
tian families poring devoutly over copies, not of the Spiritual Combat ,
but of treatises on Sexology; or to think of that Mexican monas-
tery whose sturdy pioneering zeal prompted it to have the whole
community psychoanalyzed, with the not unforeseeable result of a

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

*53

number of happy marriages, and new Christian families whose chil-
dren will, one hopes, be psychoanalyzed first thing after the tragic
event which made them come out of the intra-uterine paradise. It is
also pretty amusing to picture to yourself superiors of seminaries or of
religious houses, masters and mistresses of novices, or crack students
who are being prepared for this function, studiously and eagerly at-
tending courses in dynamic psychology which initiate them in projec-
tion tests, Rorschach, and the psychodrama of Moreno. In this way,
they will acquire the science of human behavior, and will be able to
tell souls who are or will be confided to their care “what to do,” or, in
embarrassing cases, send them to the psychiatrist, the man who really
“knows” (Domine, quid me vis facere). They will have been taught,
too, how to spot the other meaning hidden behind the confidences of
those who speak to them, and how to practice on them the counseling
of Rogers, thus giving proof of an “unconditional consideration” of
which old-fashioned charity had no knowledge. My only regret is that
I am too old to look forward to being comforted by the young gener-
ations who are being prepared in this way to dedicate themselves to
the Lord— -fully flowering in their nature, poised, de-complexed,
socially conditioned, spontaneously adapted to group reflexes, and,
at last, happy to be alive.

A visit to the psychologist is no more attractive to me than a visit
to the dentist, but I realize that in certain cases it can be necessary.
Psychologists are able to offer important services to those who really
need them, and whom the conditions of modem life make probably
numerous. In any case, it would be ridiculous to underestimate the
value of their work, and I have no intention of falling into this error.
I have a good deal of admiration for Freud, if not for the Freudians,
and I heartily value the discoveries of contemporary psychology, how-
ever incomplete. What tickles my funny bone is the rush of conse-
crated persons who, in spite of an incurable incompetence, can't wait
to have themselves indoctrinated with the most pious (and least
scientific) enthusiasm.

Who knows? Maybe all this bustle is needed to put an end to
certain absurd routines , 10 and to teach people to steer clear of errors
that a bit of intelligence and a fair amount of fraternal care and com-

18 Here, too, we arc paying a penalty for the terrible errors due to an ignorance
that good faith failed to make any less frightful, which once led to the stake, as
‘Vitahes,” »o many unfortunate victims of mental illness.

154 JACQUES M ARITAIN

passion would have sufficed to avoid. Furthermore, the elementary
psychological knowledge which has today become normal for every-
one, can help persons in charge deepen their insight in the case of
candidates for the priesthood or the religious life whose perserverance
is open to question. But much fonder hopes are being entertained.
We are to learn better than with the Gospel and the love of charity
how to lead a human community to the service of God and our
neighbor. We are to improve with a technique that is at last foolproof
the manufacturing of souls efficaciously devoted to this service.
Clearly, all such pieces of foolery will pass away as quickly as they
have appeared.

It is certain, also, that for her part the Church will find— a bit late
perhaps— a cure for the dangerous new forms of enslavement which
we owe to the empire of technique. (I cannot say as much for the
world or the State, if I can believe the picture sketched by M. Jacques
Ellul in his book, The Technological Society . 17 ) Let me say it once
more, it is Christianity which will doubtless be the last resort for the
human person, and for those poor adults who, after a too well edu-
cated childhood, will have nevertheless retained concern for freedom,
and will struggle to break from the universal conditioning.

☆

If now we turn again in the direction of theology, we will find that
the masters of the new schools of theological re-interpretation have
still other joys in store for us which, if not the purest, are at least
bracing and of a rare quality. I read a little while ago in an estimable
and widely read Catholic periodical , 18 an article in which the Rever-
end Robert T. Francoeur, praising the creative genius of the Rever-
end Pere Schoonenberg, voices the hope that one of his books
recently translated into English, Man and Sm , 19 will be considered—
although it by no means presents itself as definitive— as a classic work.
The creative genius I'll buy. But it is worth taking a closer look at a
book on original sin before holding it up as a classic work. That's why

17 New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967.

18 Jubilee , February 1966.

19 Man and Sin: A Theological View (Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1965). The original title is De Macht der Zonde, L.C.G., Malmberg,
Hertogenbosch, 1962.

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155

I couldn't wait to get hold of Man and Sin. My reading of this work
(brimming over, as you might expect, with erudition), which the
author is at pains to stress he is presenting as a hypothetical or con-
jectural essay, but whose high renovating value he certainly makes no
attempt to conceal, has given me joys of a very special kind.

As we all know, the ancient church 20 considered original sin as a
fault committed once in the past by the first human couple. We ex-
perience its effects in the’ loss by our human nature, along with the
supernatural and preternatural gifts of Adamic grace, of the internal
order which it owed to this grace. Every man, then, was bom in a
state of fallen nature which, unless he was delivered by the redeeming
grace of Christ, made it impossible for him to enter into supernatural
beatitude and the vision of God . 21

As for myself, I have always believed, and still do, that this doctrine
is of faith, and that one should be prepared to suffer death rather than
deny it. But views other than those of the ancient church are possible
today, aren't they?

The author admits neither the preternatural gifts nor the grace
proper to the state of innocence, both of which seem to him some-
what nearing fairyland; he does not admit their toss, either, nor the
too "essentialist" notion of fallen nature . 22 Without following Teil-
hard throughout (he criticizes his conception of evil as a simple,
statistically necessary penalty for progress) he adheres to the perspec-
tive and "spirit" of Teilhard, and seeks, therefore, a total reinterpreta-
tion, in keeping with our evolutionist view of the world (which is
beyond contest, of course). We know that in this view Christ did
not come primarily to save; his "first function is that of fulfilling."
But the minds renewed by the metaphysics of evolution have too
often neglected the "other functions" of Christ: "restoration, salva-
tion, and the destruction of sin." It was to remedy this shortcoming
that Pere Schoonenberg boldly set out . 28

** Ibid., p. 197.

21 St. Thomas added that children who died unbaptized — before being able,
in an act of freedom, to accept (or refuse) the grace of Christ offered to all —
were doubtless deprived of beatitude and the vision of God, but would enter into a
state of natural felicity exempt from all pain and sorrow. This doctrine of Limbo,
scorned by »o many of today's theologians who don't know what they are doing,
should be recognized as a precious treasure by every intelligent Christian.

21 Schoornenoeig, op. tit ., p. 198.

156 JACQUES MARITAIN

The reinterpretation he proposes would substitute an “evolutionary
and historical” picture for a “static” one . 34 The sin known as original
(because someone— or ones— among the anonymous primitives must
have one day begun and set in motion the history of sin ), 25 is actu-
ally an historical sin. Original sin, or the sin of the world (which the
author considers identical) is spread all through evolution, growing
continuously. For the world advances at the same time in the accept-
ance of grace and in perdition; “both salvation and doom grow
apace,” 26 in such a way that “sin is directed against the history of
salvation rather than against any law of being .” 27 In the history of
sin as in the history of salvation, what we are dealing with is a series
of “being-in-situation” in which we find ourselves by reason of prior
historical evolution: either those kinds of “being-in-situation” which
are leading to salvation because our human environment disposes us
to receive grace, or those kinds of “being-in-situation” which are lead-
ing to sin, because our human environment disposes us to sin.

Original sin is thus a “being-in-situation” in which— on account of
the history which has preceded us and the refusals of grace to which
our human environments have been subjected by the fault of a long
series of forbears— we are placed prior to any personal decision on our
part , 28 but which inclines us to sin . 29 Thus, thanks to the new
theology, we are rid of the state of fallen nature. But this state af-
fected us in our individual nature, so that a child coming into the
world was in an intrinsic state from which only the grace of Christ
could draw him. With a succession of “being-in-situation,” there is
no longer an intrinsic state of deprivation of grace in which we are
placed at birth. It becomes easier to understand why the word “re-
demption” has passed out of fashion and why the primary function of
Christ is not to save.

24 Ibid., p. 192.

26 Ibid., p. 195.

26 Ibid., p. 196.

27 Ibid., p. 195.

28 Ibid., p. 198.

28 Ibid., p. 181. As with every being-in-situation, this situation in which we are
placed before any personal decision on our part or any freely chosen attitude of the
person (p. 198) “is in some way assumed by the person in the process of self-
development . . . , and accompanied by some faint foreshadowing of a personal
decision, probably a personal sin/' (p. 181)

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157

Whatever the advisableness of this remark, what is to be kept in
mind is that the fall occurred through a long "history of sin/' 30
where we are nevertheless permitted to assume that before Christ
certain human groups, which, as luck would have it, history had left
fully open to primeval grace, could thus be free from original sin.
You can see we have made progress since the ancient churchy and
since that St. Paul who pretended to maintain that the sin of one
single man had “passed into all men for their condemnation” 31 and
that likewise the justice of one man worked in them for their justifi-
cation.

Those who were bom in the fortunate groups in question w r ere in
a state of "immaculate conception” 32 (with this difference, noted
by the author, that it is not to the foreseen merits of Christ the Re-
deemer, as in the case of Mary, that they owed their condition).
What is one to say then? Has not this clause, " intuitu meritorum
Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis , by the foreseen merits of
Christ Jesus, Saviour of the human race,” been expressly placed in the
definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception to maintain a
point of faith— the impossibility of any human being being born ex-
empt from original sin, with the sole exception of the grace thus
bestowed on Mary? Let us, to be polite, simply say that being Profes-
sor of Dogmatic Theology at the Catechetical Center of Nijmegen
must be a remarkable "being-in-situation” of daydream.

In any case, the crucifixion of Christ has put an end to the possi-
bility of those immaculate conceptions prior to Mary's which were
permitted by history. And if, until then, the universality of original
sin "must not be taken strictly,” 38 the putting to death of Christ,
because it cast out of the world the Author of life, 84 has an impor-
tance and a seriousness greater by far than any possible first sin in the

M Ibid., p. 178.

11 Rom. 5:18. (Yes, this is the scuac of the Greek text.)

82 Op. cit., pp. 189-190. “In that hypothesis more people may have engaged in
"immaculate conception' not in the way in which the Church professes it for
Mary — that is, as a gift proceeding from Redemption — but as it may be said, and
ls sometimes explicitly said, of Adam and Eve, that is, as a gift coming from
primeval grace."

38 Ibid., p. 190.

34 Ibid., p. 196.

158 JACQUES MARITAIN

human race . 35 It is this supreme culmination of the sin of the world
—the rejection of Christ from the world where he dwelt among us—
which, completing the measure of the sins of the fathers, brought it
to pass that thenceforth the universality of original sin would admit
of no exception. From that time on no one can escape from it except
through the grace of baptism and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit
which followed the Resurrection. Since the death of Christ, therefore,
every man enters the world simultaneously in the disastrous situation
of original sin and (because of the Resurrection) in a situation of sal-
vation. 3 ®

Here, then, is why the Word was made flesh. The stroke of genius
is to have seen that the death of Jesus on the Cross brings us perdi-
tion right along with salvation. It places each man at birth in the
situation of being lost through original sin— a situation which has now
become universal— and simultaneously in the situation of being
saved through the grace of the risen Christ after his crucifixion. (Its
the Resurrection that matters: in this ‘'Theological View” I read
nothing about the redeeming sacrifice or the merits of the Passion.)
In truth, the cross itself, the blessed cross, is hardly, for our author,
the spes unica. It is “only from God's point of view, for whom noth-
ing is impossible, that salvation comes to us through the cross of

35 That is the essential point for P£re Schoonenberg. We used to believe that
the sin of those who condemned Christ and who failed to recognize the Messiah
of Israel and the light of the world consisted solely — and that was enough! — in the
putting to death of the Lamb of God: felix culpa , we might say, as Adam's fault
had been, thanks to which Christ accomplished the redeeming sacrifice for which
he came. Not so! The sin of those who condemned Christ goes much deeper than
that. What must be seen first of all in the death of Christ is the physical or
cosmic fact which resulted from it: the Author of grace was excluded from the
world and from this earthly existence where he had come to share our life and
offer us salvation. By that very fact “our whole existence on earth” is "deprived of
the life of grace, so that everybody starts his own existence with the lack of it.”
(Ibid., p. 190.)

The reason this is true, we are told, is that before the Incarnation the com-
munication of grace was "interpersonal, charismatic” (how nice to hear that), but
now this road is "closed for all,” since Christ is no longer among us. Hence the
necessity of baptism. That is only one of the gems in this precious "Theological
View.”

36 Ibid., pp. 196, 197. "Since Christ's death on the cross, every man enters the
world in the disastrous situation of original sin. Everybody enters the world in that
situation of perdition, but the opposite, too, is true. Every man enters the world
in a situation of salvation, for the Lord has risen and his spirit fills the earth.”
(P- 1 97 )

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*59

Christ, in connection, of course, with the Resurrection. From man’s
point of view, the cross of Christ means the greatest disaster.” 37
The Lamb of God burdens us with the sin of the world at the very
time he is taking it on himself. As far as dialectic is concerned, noth-
ing could be better and everything is finally clear. But it is damn
strange all the same.

. * ☆

The judgment deserved by the works of the renovators who season
their theology either a la Teilhard or with the sauce of the phenomen-
ologists is not hard to reach: they are the product of an impassioned
fatuousness anxious to serve the idols of the times. However ephem-
eral they may be, these choice writings threaten to disconcert com-
pletely Christian consciousness and the life of faith. Instead of the
true new fire called for by our era, they bring us only the smoke from
rotten wood which cannot catch fire. The would-be renewers we are
discussing are hapless stragglers who would like us to return to a zero

17 “From man's point of view the cross of Christ means the greatest disaster.
Only from the point of view of God, for whom nothing is impossible, salvation
comes to us through the cross of Christ, in connection, of course, with the Resur-
rection, for if Christ has not risen, we are still in our sins" (1 Cor. 15:17). (Ibid.,
p. 197.) The author apparently considers the Cross only a preface putting an end
to the life of Christ here below (while seeming to forget completely that he
sacrificed himself and laid down his life of his own free will), so that salvation
could be achieved through the Resurrection. This is a rash re-interpretation — and
in my view a disastrous and intolerable one — of the whole of Christian thought,
which has always held to the belief that the sacrifice of the cross and the merits of
the Passion — victory over sin — have accomplished the work of saving and redeem-
ing mankind, and that the Resurrection — victory over death — has consummated
this work by inaugurating the kingdom of glory to come, and by making possible —
for ib, here below — the sending of the Paraclete by the risen Son ascended to the
boeom of his Fathcc, ao that “as Christ is risen from the dead through the glory
of the Father, in the tame way we too might enter in newness of life.” (Rom. 6:4.)
E>oe$ not the sacred liturgy itself declare this ejrolicitfy? One has only to read at
one go what is said in the Preface of the Holy Cross and of the Ascension: “Qui
sahtiem humani gtmru m ligno cruris constitute?’; “ Qui post resurrect ionem
suam sU eleYOtus m cotkim , ut nos dvtimtatis suae ftibuerct & sm pdriicipes.” P£re
Scboonenbeig twists from its obvious meaning the text he invokes of First Co-
rinthians. What St. Paul tells us here is that if the Resurrection — which, by
making manifest the divinity of Christ, rs the proof and pledge of our faith in the
redemption accomplished by him on the cross — has not taken place, this faith
would be in vain. If our faith in the Redemption is vain, then obviously we are
“still in our s ins. 5 *

i6o

JACQUES MARITAIN

point so that we can begin all over again. In other words, they wish to
make our thought retreat across the centuries and bring us back to
the gropings of childhood (a modem childhood, of course, brought
up on audio-visual techniques and trying its hand at typewriters and
computers). That is not how one makes progress.

It is desirable, surely, that serious theologians should take the
trouble to refute the assertions, constructions and hypotheses of
these stammering stragglers who see themselves as pioneers. Yet this
is likely to prove a waste of time. For one never gets very far launch-
ing frontal assaults on what L6on Bloy, referring to the right-minded
cleansings with which the Abbe BethMem tried to make innocuous
the literature of his day, and which now appear antediluvian, liked to
call an “extraordinary flood of foolishness.” What the people of God
expect of theological wisdom is for it to take the lead and cut the
grass right out from under the feet of the vain Doctors of Divinity by
renewing, where necessary, its own problematics and discovering, in
total fidelity to truths already acquired, new truths which will take
their place alongside the old ones and new horizons which will enrich
and enlarge our knowledge. Nothing will be achieved by an idiotic
attempt to break everything in order to do up everything to the taste
of the day; what is needed is an effort of the mind to see more deeply
into the mystery which it will never finish probing.

The truth is that the silly things of our day are quite often a biolo-
gical phenomenon (to call them intellectual would be saying too
much) of reaction to the silly things of the past, particularly the
recent past. Thus, another conclusion emerges from a study of the
pseudo-renewals which a chronolatrous fatuity is causing to swarm
before our eyes. We see a remarkable confirmation of something we
knew all along: namely, that what goes by the name of integralism is
an ill of the mind disastrous on two counts. First of all, in itself; and
secondly, for the consequences it entails.

First, in itself. Integralism is, of itself, an embezzlement, an abuse
of trust committed in the name of truth— that is, the worst offense
against divine Truth and human intelligence. It takes hold of true
formulas which it empties of their living content and freezes in the
refrigerators of a restless police of the minds. In these true formulas it
is not truth that integralism actually sets its heart on and places

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161

above everything— truth which demands to be understood in its pre-
cise balance and exact meaning and is never something to go to sleep
on. (It always involves the dangerous desire to go further and to en-
gender as well as integrate new truths, whether they are truths of the
speculative order which the progress of thought gives rise to, or
those of a practical order whose discovery is required by the new
historical stages through which human societies are passing.) In the
formulas which it 'freezes, integralism sees and cherishes human
means of security — whether for the convenience of intellects which
immobility reassures by giving them, at cut-rate, a good bedrock of
fidelity, inner coherence and firmness — or for the equally cheap pro-
tection these frozen formulas offer persons in authority, sparing them
any risk when they brandish them, prudently as regards themselves,
and rudely when it comes to others— or for the ease of government
they provide as instruments of prohibition, more or less covert threat
and intimidation. In sum, the primacy thus passes to human security
and the need for self reassurance, whether it be psychological or
social, thanks to the various protective devices called for by this
primacy of security, the chief of which is a vigilant ardor in denounc-
ing whatever threatens it: all that, and here comes the abuse of trust,
in invoking God and the blessed Truth! The net result is to inhibit
the search which the intellect, when it is straight, loves not for the
pleasure of seeking but for the joy of discovery and as a means of
entering into possession of more of the truth.

It is iategralism taken in itself I have been describing here. Of
course, a good many minds more or less tainted by it are in good
faith, and some even of great value. It is in their unconscious that
integralism is at work and spreads its poison. But that's not the
question.

As for the consequences which integralism entails, they are all the
more dangerous since, as a rale, it is tied to a political and social
philosophy which is itself dominated by a secret need for security
above all. Confronted no longer with the movement of ideas but
with the movement of history, this philosophy takes refuge in
utopian claims of restoring order (it's been upset, hasn't it, by this
cursed fever for justice of which men should be cured); it cherishes

162 JACQUES MARITAIN

force and a brutal authoritarianism, especially when they derive from
a usurped power; it distrusts the people and freedom, and, in spite of
occasional demagogic trappings, helps to buttress the interests of the
mighty ones and a regime of protracted social injustice which, shaken
in the end, stops at nothing to insure its survival in the midst of a
world in turmoil but in development. Why be surprised when the
consequences entailed by integralism with its usual political and so-
cial implications, and by the frustrations thus produced in Christian
intelligence and sensibility, lead inevitably, owing to the pendulum
movement of human affairs biologically considered, to an explosion
of childish anarchy in the opposite direction? Why should we be
surprised when in some of our spiritual guides, unstable guides car-
ried away by vainglory, but also in many generous souls who readily
follow them— mingling together religion and politics, and mistaking
genuine doctrinal rigor for the integralist abuse of trust— the conse-
quences I just pointed out take the form of the fine outburst of theo-
logical, philosophical and exegetical nonsense which today greets us
at every turn? And it is a fact that integralism, in quite various de-
grees and under more or less veiled forms, has been spreading among
us during the nineteenth century and the first decades of our own.
Now, with a crash, the pendulum is swinging to the opposite extreme.

Acknowledging such historical misfortunes is in no way an excuse
for the neo-modernist flood I have mentioned, or for the fatuity,
mental weakness and mental cowardice which are responsible for it.
We have simply to acknowledge also that, in the final analysis, the
amount of foolishness and intolerance in human history remains rela-
tively constant, merely passing from one camp to the other, changing
styles and having significance in terms of opposite algebraical signs.
If I use the word intolerance, it's because, at this stage of the game,
whoever gets out of line and refuses to believe in the “latest” fables
to hit the market is treated as a reject, good only for the scrap heap.
I have suffered more than a little myself from the integralist meth-
ods, accusations and denunciations. But I hope I haven't lost my head
over it and have kept my reason sufficiently free of the traumas of
resentment not to yield to the delicious and so “consoling” pendu-
lum movement which is sweeping along so many of my dear
contemporaries.

☆

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163

The crisis in which theology is involved today is obviously a passing
phenomenon. In the Dasein there is doubtless the human infatua-
tion, but there is also the Holy Spirit, for theology is a necessary
ingredient of the mystical Body. The conjectural and imaginary theol-
ogies will go as they have come, and so will the vain hopes put in
psychological techniques.

Let us rest assured, too, that Thomistic theology— this will take a
bit of time— will recover whatever ground it has lost. It will, where
necessary, renew itself and likewise its methods of teaching. And it
will undertake at last — within the truth (ever up-to-date above time,
but demanding to develop in time) of the great wisdom of St.
Thomas— the vast work of discernment and integration which the
Church and human thought both need. Let us rest assured, too, that
die Order of St. Dominic will surmount its present crisis, (whatever
way you look at it, it's better to be in a crisis than to cut a fine figure
by carrying water on both shoulders), if only those of its members
who are clear-sighted don't let themselves be too intimidated by the
stars of the intelligentsia and the precious students.

What, from his humble hut, the peasant of the Garonne would
now like to bring to attention is that in the great and true renewal we
are looking forward to, Christian philosophy will doubtless— this too
will be something new in history— have its own role to play wLiicfa
will be of no small importance.

I stated earlier that the metaphysics of St. Thomas is the Christian
philosophy par excellence. In St. Thomas himself this metaphysics
(not Aristotle's, but St. Thomas', we must go on repeating), as de-
cisive as its part was, remained in the role of a servant, because it was
an instrument entirely committed to the service of theology. It was
not established in the autonomy which its nature as philosophy re-
quires. It had no roof of its own, nor had it installed its workshops
on its own account.

The question is whether it will do so today, faced with so much
opposition, unjustified but only too natural, on the part of philoso-
phers (if there still are any) and of theologians (who sometimes seem
to prefer employing someone who isn’t one of the household). Still,
Christian philosophy remains philosophy. And, in this capacity, when
it works for its own ends and on its own account, it too is a queen,
although of a profane and less lofty kingdom, which depends only on

164 JACQUES MARITAIN

the natural powers of reason. Despite the autonomy suitable to its
condition, it recognizes, since it is Christian, the superior rights of
faith and of the queen of sacred knowledge.

Under these circumstances, Christian philosophy, if it is sufficiently
versed in theology, may happen— with no intention, of course, of
settling the matter definitively— to become interested in questions
which, by themselves, fall within the province of the theologian. In
so doing, it will not consider such questions from the theological
standpoint and in the perspective of theology, but in its own
philosophical perspective. It is risky but it can be done. As I have
observed elsewhere , 38 the light of Christian philosophy is not the
light of faith using reason in order to get at some understanding of
revealed mysteries, but the light of reason assisted by faith so that it
may better perform its own work of intellectual inquiry. And this
very fact authorizes Christian philosophy, at the summit of its pos-
sibilities, to concern itself in its own way with matters belonging to
theology. In such a case it is in a free, though subordinate, capacity
that philosophy can eventually be of service to theology, since, by its
own nature, it is more available for a work of research and discovery.
At this point the ancilla becomes research-worker. The last word
will, of course, belong to the theologian. But it is the philosopher
who will have presented the theologian with the research hypothesis.

Here, it seems to me, is one particularly remarkable aspect of the
role reserved for Christian philosophy in the future. One can already
detect something of this kind in the investigations, to which I have
already alluded, of Olivier Lacombe and Louis Gardet on natural
mystique. If Christian philosophy is, by nature, more available than
theology for a work of research and discovery, this is because it doesn't
have the same responsibilities, nor the same obligation to guide itself
according to the chart of a long and venerable tradition and always,
each step of the way, with an eye to the revelation transmitted in
the Scriptures. In an age when there is so much to renew, this greater
availability of Christian (Thomistic) philosophy for a work of re-
search and discovery, if it is given access to the workrooms of the the-
ologian, may possibly provide appreciable help in the work of renewal
which (Thomistic) theology has itself to perform.

38 Cf. my book, “De la grdce et de Vhumanite de Jesus ” (Paris: Desclee De
Brouwer, 1967).

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165

Yet this is obviously, for Christian philosophy, an exceptional and
slightly dangerous task. In its ordinary behavior, when it labors in
realms which belong only to itself, the role assigned to it has a good
many other aspects.

In the first place— this goes without saying and is fundamental— its
task is to advance in philosophic truth and to perform the work of
discernment and liberation so often mentioned in these pages with
respect to the various currents of contemporary thought.

And there is something else I should like to point out— as an aside,
but its importance, in view of the ecumenical perspectives opened up
by the Council, should not be discounted. It seems clear that in its
very capacity as philosophy, Christian philosophy is, on its own level,
better “situated" than theology for the dialogue (the true dialogue,
of course, not the one which takes place on public platforms). From
the very fact that it depends, by nature, on reason, not on revelation,
philosophy, unlike theology, does not need to engage in a dialogue
with the theological systems of non-Catholic Christian families or
non-Christian religions, which, fraternal as it is, inevitably runs against
painful and sometimes insurmountable mutual oppositions. Dog-
matic differences are not philosophy's concern, at least not directly.
The object of its investigation belongs to the natural order and has to
do with that natural ecumenism the desire for which, however frus-
trated, naturally haunts the human mind. Not only is dialogue with
non-Christians much easier for philosophy, since each of the parties
can more easily receive from the other valuable contributions for his
own thought, but the possibilities for intellectual agreement in this
field are also of much vaster scope. The spontaneous interest Moslem
and Hindu thinkers are now taking in some of the research of Tho-
mistic philosophy is proof of this.

Finally, if philosophy is of itself even less the private preserve of
the laity than theology is of the clergy, the fact remains that for
roughly three centuries laymen have enjoyed a numerical advantage
in this field. Let us suppose that Christian philosophy should succeed
in fulfilling its development. The work (not too bad a job, let's also
assume) of the laymen taking part in its endeavors would, in its own
way, be a small sign of the appreciable change history can discern in
the Catholic uotkm of the laity since the days when Conrad dc
Mcgenburg said, in so full-flavored a manner, that the “genre" proper

i66

JACQUES MARITAIN

to laymen was to be ‘an ignorant people, who ought to be ruled by
the clergy, in accordance with the principle that it is up to the wise
man to rule/' 39 Without contradicting this principle, and while
being careful to pay due respect to the superior wisdom of theology,
Christian philosophy is perhaps in a position to bring its own modest
contribution to what current-day jargon calls “the up-grading of the
laity/'

TRUTH AND FREEDOM

It's a well known fact that the Church has made St. Thomas her
Common Doctor, and that, particularly since the time of Leo XIII,
the Popes have never ceased recommending his doctrine in the most
urgent of terms. 40 Paul VI, in a letter to the American Dominicans
(March 7, 1964) quoted, like his predecessor, Pius XI, the remarkable
words of John of Saint-Thomas: “In St. Thomas, it is something
much greater than St. Thomas which is being received and de-
fended/' 41 We know too that Canon 1366, $2, of the Code of Canon
Law enjoins professors who hold their function from the Church to
treat philosophical or theological matters ad Doctoris Angelici ra-
tionem , doctrinam et principia, according to the principles, doctrine
and rational approach of the Angelic Doctor.

As a matter of fact, this canonical injunction and all the exhorta-
tions of the sovereign Pontiffs don't seem to have made too deep an
impression on the professors who have been given the responsibility
of teaching by the Church. Yet I suspect that those who do the best
they can to follow these directives are somewhat more numerous
than is generally believed. That doesn't alter the fact that not a few
others pay no heed at all to such directives, judging that all of this
stuff is today out-of-date, and that the supreme authority continues

39 “Genus laicorum est populus ignarus. . . . Debet regi a. clero , quoniam
sapientis est regere” Quoted by Jerzy Kalinowsky and Stefan Swiezawski in their
book, which I like so much, La philosophie d. Vheure du Concile (Paris: Soc.
d’Editions Internationales, 1965).

40 Cf. p. 127, n. 1, the celebrated text of Pius XI, stating that St. Thomas
should be called “the Common or universal Doctor of the Church, for the Church
has adopted his doctrine as Her own."

41 Cursus theol. t ed. Solesmes, I, p. 222 (Vives, I, p. 289) : “Majus aliquid in
sancto Thoma quam sanetus Thomas suscipitur et defenditurJ 9

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167

its exhortations only by virtue of a saintly routine (the wind has
changed, that alone is the decisive argument for the creative geniuses
who are in the wind). And a good many other professors— I'm afraid
this has been the case for years— feel ill at ease teaching things whose
truth escapes them. For them, the ad Angelici Doctoris doctrinam
means first of all invoking every now and then the name of the Com-
mon Doctor, by selecting from _his works, in a brand of eclecticism of
sterling quality, whatever seems to keep pace with the thought of
other masters (or textbooks) much dearer to them.

Even were the dead to rise again in support of the recommenda-
tions of the Church, the situation would remain unaltered. Is it
because a number of professors would resemble those people the
Gospel tells of in the parable of Lazarus and the evil rich man? No,
that's not my idea. For we should not forget, no doubt, the age-old
attachment for rival doctrines, nor, of course, the demon of fashion
and the itching in the ears. But there is something else we should
not lose sight of: namely, the nature and laws of the intellect, for
which, at least in the realm of human inquiry, the argument from
authority is, as St. Thomas said, the weakest of arguments.

In the hands of the Church, nothing less than the requirements of
the truths of faith itself and the preservation of the revealed deposit
has the power to put minds under obligation. When the Church rec-
ommends a human doctrine, however energetically, she obviously
could not possibly do so in the name of divine Truth, as is the case
with a dogmatic promulgation. She does so— in the name of her di-
vinely enlightened but human wisdom— only to bear witness to a doc-
trine which, in the words of Pius XI, she has made her own and in
which she sees the sole worthwhile philosophical and theological
guarantee of the preservation and spread of faith in men's minds. This
witness borne by the Church is surely enough to cause many souls
who are in love with truth to feci inclined toward the doctrine thus
brought to their attention, and to set to studying it, fervently and
hopefully; but it doesn't carry much weight with the professors. Such
trust in the Bride of Christ and such love for her wisdom appear to
diem something rather mystical, and what they require is something
legal. So they have been given Canon 1366, $2, which brings them a
disciplinary regulation, which, being unable to impose anything on
diem in the name of the truth of faith, makes it their duty, in the

1 68

JACQUES M ARITAIN

name of prudence, queen of the moral virtues, to teach the doctrine
of St. Thomas because it is the safest one. That's why I have little
sympathy for this canon. Such a procedure is certainly legitimate in
itself, but in practice it threatens to give rise to the very opposite of
what is intended. For it is truth, not security— and the “fair dangers"
of which Plato spoke, more than prudence — which draws the intellect
on in its striving toward knowledge.

Although I have little sympathy for this canon, I refrain from wish-
ing for its abrogation, which would be taken up quite wrongly, and, as
a result, would be deplorable on all counts. But it seems to me that
we are confronted here with a very serious drama, which goes well
beyond the Canon in question. As disrespectful as I am toward the
general run of professors , 42 I am aware that for all of them, even the
most infatuated, truth is the object of their search (when they are
seeking) and of their teaching (when they are not fooling around with
conjectures) . Even those who today, by virtue of an unnatural divorce
between the end and the object of knowledge, see their fondest goal
in Efficacy, do so because they mistakenly believe it's truly better
that way. If they don't exactly shine in their love for Truth, still
they burn with a love for the truths of scholarship. Besides, it's not
love which is at stake here, but intelligence. And however misguided
the latter may be, truth always remains its object. (Let us recall, for
the philosophers, that the object is related to “formal causality,” not
to “final causality.'') And truth keeps pace with freedom.

Doubtless professors of theology have a special duty toward the
Church, since theology is a thing of the Church, while philosophy is a
thing of the world or of culture. But to have as professors of theology
men who, being utterly in doubt about the truth of St. Thomas'
doctrine, would merely parrot it out of obedience is hardly an ideal
state of affairs. The problem is to get them to see the truth of St.
Thomas, and this presupposes a host of conditions for which the cult

42 I am speaking here of professors and their own intellectual life (which plays
a central part in the matter); Fm not speaking of their students for whom, ob-
viously, it will always be true that oportet addiscentem credere. Still less am I
speaking (heaven forbid!) of the thorny question, totally different and much more
general, of publications, about which it will always be desirable that the public be
enlightened (exactly how, now that the old Index is happily defunct, is no concern
of mine) .

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

169

of today's mentality makes them unfit. But this also presupposes that
they move in a climate of freedom.

I am aware I am here trespassing on preserves which are in no way
mine. But perhaps an old hermit will be allowed to express a humble
wish. I am dreaming of a day when the Church would turn, even in
these most delicate matters, toward the roads of freedom. Of her own
intellectual life she has a particularly keen awareness (because particu-
larly assisted by the Holy Spirit) in the person of the chief who here
on earth is responsible for her universality. It is in exercising the
liberty proper to the mystical Body of Christ that she has adopted the
doctrine of the Angelic Doctor. Could not a kind of reversal take
place in the practical manner in which she recommends this doctrine?
More fervently than ever, but by appealing less to obedience and
docility than to the freedom of the intellect in its pursuit of truth
and by relying less upon her disciplinary authority than on her own
unfailing confidence in the truth of this doctrine?

Is there any reason to fear that in such a climate of freedom the
number of teachers either ignorant or scornful of St. Thomas would
proceed to increase? This number is so great right now that it is
difficult to imagine it getting any larger. It would be nice enough if
the opinions they hold and teach contained nothing which, on the
theological level, would present too much of a danger to the content
of revelation, and, on the philosophical level, would come close to
respecting the truths of a natural order which have a necessary connec-
tion with this content. But were there an explicit statute of freedom,
wouldn't they become less concerned with the constraint (and the
weakness) of legal injunctions and more appreciative, at least some of
them, of the witness given by the Church to the truth of her own ra-
tional discernment, enlightened by her faith, when she recommends
with extraordinary insistence a doctrine which is human, no doubt,
but which, in her divinely assisted mind, she holds to be essentially
grounded on truth? If for her part, the Church, while continuing to
maintain her canonical regulations in such a way as to give them, as
far as Thomism is concerned, the value of a simple counsel (besides,
that's the way they are at present generally considered), were to
decide to use those supreme maternal resources, which it is permis-
sible to consider the most efficacious, and which involve imploring
rather than commanding; if she were to address an urgent appeal to all

170 JACQUES MAR I T A I N

who have ears to hear, and loudly declare how eagerly she wants— she,
the blessed mother anxious for the salvation of her children— the
living tradition of St. Thomas to go on growing and expanding from
age to age, is it too much to believe that such an appeal would be
heard by a good many of the faithful, and even by a sufficient number
of professors, sufficiently intent, moreover, on studying the Common
Doctor, and thereby sufficiently convinced of the truth of his doc-
trine to ensure, however feeble a proportion they might be in the
beginning, its preservation, progress and expansion?

Such is the dream of an old hermit who may possibly have lost his
way. If that is the case, he asks only to be put back on the right road.

VITAI LAMPADA TRADUNT

Little teams and small flocks have always been the ones who per-
formed the great work. It looks as if this will be truer for our age than
it ever has been, precisely because it will be (it already is) an age of
massification through technique. Doubtless it is possible to massify
completely all our activities and pleasures, our imagination, our un-
conscious, and, indirectly, the intellectual habits of a great many. But
one will never succeed in completely massifying the spirit (and the
supra-conscious of the spirit), or in totally alienating from himself the
individual person, that mysterious and scandalous beggar who insists
on existing and has means of his own (a poor blighter utters, even if
only in silent prayer, a few words, naming a friend and pleading with
heaven for him, and behold, that operates ) . Assuming (which I don't,
in spite of the ways in which the world is going on these days) a total
massification of mankind, it would remain for the individual person,
in those cases (which will always be met with) where he had not be-
come completely alienated from himself, to flee either into neurosis
or into God: which would give promise of a great many lunatics and a
few saints.

Yet I don't think we will ever reach that point. In his rather pessi-
mistic book on technique, which I have already cited, M. Ellul points
out somewhere that in actual fact the technician (who in addition to
inventing new techniques is able to modify existing ones) matters

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

* 7 *

more than technique iteself. And it seems to me that this observation
(a passing remark of the author) has a considerable bearing on the
subject. For the technician is a man, and in a better position to ques-
tion himself on technique than are those who receive the blessings of
the latter. I am not unaware that among technicians there are a good
many victims of the commonplaces to which we are treated about
Technique in the service of Man, the Liberation of Man through
Technique, technological humanism, etc. But if I can believe what
I am told by trustworthy friends, the best representatives of the
world of technicians feel much more concern for the mystery of the
true man, and are much more open to a genuine realism, than are
those who belong to the world of the intelligentsia. What they lack is
a thorough idea of man, which no one in the intelligentsia furnishes
them, and which it would be up to philosophers and theologians
worthy of the name to propose to them.

In other words, assuming a day would come when they find the
intellectual guidance they are seeking, and assuming also that in such
a case the better of them (which is not unlikely) would take the lead,
it will be less with politicians or business men than with (enlight-
ened) technicians that, as far as temporal activity and the temporal
order are concerned, the world would have its best chance of escaping
complete massification and the other servitudes to which the empire
of technology is, of itself, dragging us off, as long as revolutionary
changes don't occur in the management of techniques with respect to
human life. All this seems rather obvious, since technicians play so
dominant a part in our world. And all this presupposes, I repeat (per-
haps as a utopian ) , a day when technology would be at least taken in
hand by technicians who, having found the intellectual guidance for
which they at present seek in vain, and being inspired by an authentic
humanism careful to respect all that is in man, would then be in a
position to overturn a good many things in the kingdom they govern
and bring about the necessary revolutions.

In other respects, when we look at the process of technical massifi-
cation that is going on before our very eyes, it seems that the realm of
the spiritual should also, and first of all, have its role to play in a
matter of such consequence to mankind. From this point of view, at
least for the moment, the prospect, frankly speaking, is scarcely

1?2

JACQUES MARITAIN

reassuring. By employing mass means, Christians will unquestionably
obtain a certain number of immediate results of a bind to gratify
their shepherds. But to resort in the first place, and on a grand
scale, even for the loftiest goals and with the purest intentions, to
the very things which depend on the empire of technique is to
contribute by the same token to strengthening this empire, with all
the threats of which it is at present chock-full, and which, moreover,
are all the more redoubtable as one allows it to have a hold over things
that, of themselves, belong to the realm of the spiritual itself, and of
the freedom of the spirit. Under such circumstances we should regard
the long-term outcome as rather doubtful.

If we take all of the foregoing into account, it clearly appears, me-
thinks, that it is more than ever the task of the little teams and small
flocks to struggle most effectively for man and the spirit, and, in
particular, to give the most effective witness to those truths for which
men so desperately long and which are, at present, in such short sup-
ply. For only the little teams and small flocks are able to muster
around something which completely escapes technique and the proc-
ess of massification, and which is the love of wisdom and of the
intellect and the trust in the invisible radiation of this love. Such
invisible rays carry far; they have the same kind of incredible power
in the realm of the spirit that atomic fission and the miracles of
microphysics have in the world of matter.

So here we are back once again at our reflections on Christian
(Thomistic) philosophy and theology. To perform a mass action is,
as far as these are concerned, a forbidden dream. And even if, in the
teaching of the Church, it is to be hoped that one day they will re-
sume (if they ever had it) or at last assume the decisively quickening
role the kingdom of God on pilgrimage would like so much to see
them play, they will never have in the world, I say the world , which
has such need for them, a publicity success or a great multitude of
workers.

Once the living waters of common human thought, which were
running underground for centuries, were brought together by the
angels of God to gush forth as a spring on the surface of the earth, a
day came when there surged up from them a life-giving river which
will never run dry, even if now and then it becomes very thin in size
(though not in inner strength). What is absolutely needed is the very

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

*73

existence and activity of this current. We arc sure they will hold out.

To transmit through the world and all the tribulations of the age
the flame of the wisdom of St. Thomas and to make this wisdom
progress as, here too, it demands to do, it is not a great crowd of car-
riers, sometimes a little drunk and stumbling, that is required. The
little teams and small flocks, who work at their own risk with no
object or goal but truth, and are counting quite a lot on the help of
the Paraclete, will suffice. For the assistance of the Holy Spirit does
not only help men when they are working within the precincts of the
mystical Body and in the Councils of the Holy Church. The Spirit is
active in the world, too, in an entirely different and apparently more
hazardous way, amid all the clumsy efforts and faux-pas, and also in
the passionate striving for truth and the loving prayer of men (even if
they belong to the genus Idicorum) who stammer here: don’t we
know that He will renew the face of the earth? Et renovabis faciem
Urrae.

April 28, 1966

7 THE TRUE NEW FIRE

THE AFFAIRS OF
GOD’S KINGDOM

The One and Holy

Perhaps because I have spent my life philosophizing— and even an old
peasant has trouble forgetting this— I have spoken at length of the
demands and worries of the human intellect; I needed two chapters
to bring out my package. And because I am just an old philosopher,
and one who approaches only in fear and trembling a subject far
above him, I promised myself that I would be more brief in this con-
cluding chapter. Alas, it is longer than all the others. I might have
done well to drop it, and yet since I started disserting on the true new
fire, I could not omit those things in which its flame leaps highest.

Since this chapter treats with the affairs of God's kingdom, it is
naturally advisable to begin with a section concerning the Church. I
first had the idea of putting together a sort of anthology of the princi-
pal texts of the Council's Constitution on the Church, to which I
would have joined, by way of illustration, other texts drawn from
trustworthy theologians (there are still some around, and there always
will be). I quickly perceived that such a project would fill too many
pages and I would be starting a lengthy business, too weighty for this
book. I will therefore limit myself to setting out as simply as possible
some ideas which have come to me in readings and meditations over
the years, and which have been reinforced further by the teaching of
Lumen Gentium. I apologize to theologians for having occasionally
resorted to a vocabulary which is not theirs at points where, trying to
avoid too technical a language, I have chosen words within easier
reach of most men.

Many people too frequently see the Church only as a vast juridical

*74

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

*75

administration charged with the duty of reminding them that God
exists, and they look no further than its external apparatus. They do
not know what the Church is. The Church is a mystery as profound as
the Incarnation, and that is why the title of the first chapter ("The
Mystery of the Church”) of the dogmatic Constitution Lumen
Gentium was chosen by the Council the way it was.

THE PERSONALITY OF THE CHURCH

"In the second century Hermas 1 was already depicting the
Church as an old woman, and giving this reason for doing so: 'She
was founded before all things, and it was for her that the world was
created/ ” 2

The Church, Pere Clerissac, wrote, has a mysterious personality
which is underlined for us in the four-fold definition of the Nicean
Council: Unam , Sanctam , Catholicam et Apostolican Ecclesiam , a
personality which reflects "the divine Being, the most universal and
the most personal of beings .” 3 It was this personality that St. Ire-
naeus had in mind when he said: "Having received this [apostolic]
preaching and this faith, . . . the Church, although spread through-
out the world, guards that deposit with constant solicitude, as if she
really dwelt in but one house; and to those things she adheres in the
same way, I mean as if she had but one soul and one heart; and it is
with that same oneness that she preaches and teaches and transmits
them to generation after generation, as if she had but one mouth.” 4

And it is with the same unity that she pronounces the Lord's
prayer: "The Lord’s prayer is pronounced by the common person of
the whole Church.” 5

Nothing could be more important than to try to form some idea of
this personality, which goes infinitely beyond any purely human no-
tion of personality, since it concerns a multitude spread out through
the whole world and through all ages, and has nevertheless, to a su-

1 The Shepherd , Vis. II, Ch. TV.

2 R. P. Humbert Clerissac, Le Mystire de VEglise (Paris: 6 d. du Cerf, 1918,
5th cd.) .

*Ibid. t p. 43.

4 Adv. Haer., Book I, c. 10, 2. (Ibid., p. 49)

5 St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. theol. 1 1 — 1 1 , 83, 16, ad 3.

176 JACQUES MARITAIN

preme degree, the marks of personality— unity of being and of life,
consciousness, memory, perception, voice (“the audible Voice of the
Church is the Pope" 6 ), and a task to accomplish— which, also, is one,
through all times and places.

To designate the Church in such or such of her aspects, there are
certain accepted names— all true, and all synonymous in spite of
their great diversity, in the profundity of the mystery, but all inade-
quate inasmuch as they are images drawn from things of this world.
The Constitution on the Church has enumerated all these names. I
would like to talk about only a few of them here.

THE CHURCH, BRIDE AND MYSTICAL BODY

The Church is the Body of Christ and she is his Bride.

“St. Paul calls the Church a ‘Body' that has Christ for its 'Head/
From this it would appear that Christ and the Church complete one
another in the manner that the head and the body do in man; Christ
being, on the one hand, the (formal) completion of the Church:
'You have come to fullness of life in him who is the head of all princi-
palities and of all power' 7 ; and the Church, with her greatnesses
of hierarchy and sanctity, being on the other hand, the (material)
completion of Christ: God 'made him the Head over all things for
the Church, who is his Body, the fullness of him who fills all in all/ 8
Accordingly, St. John Chrysostom could write that 'the pleroma
(that is to say, the fulfillment, the completion) of the Head is the
Body, and the pleroma of the Body, the Head/ ” 9

Personality presupposes oneness; there is no personality without
complete oneness of being and of life. It is by reason of her complete
oneness that the Church or the mystical Body has her personality; in
other terms by reason of the complete oneness in which her members
are bound together by the unity of apostolic faith, Baptism and the
other sacraments, and obedience to Peter. Thus in possession of her

8 Humbert Cl£rissac, op. cit., p. 55.

7 Col., 2:10.

8 Cf. Constitution on the Church, Ch. I, Par, 7.

9 Charles Joumet, UEglise du Verbe Incarne (Paris: Descl6e De Brouwer,
1951), II, p. 53. The passage from St. John Chrysostom is taken from In Epist.
ad Ephes., cap. I, horn. 3.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

l ll

complete unity and her personality, the Church is at the same time
mysterious and visible. She is visible or outwardly recognizable by the
three signs which I have just mentioned: profession of the same
faith, regeneration through the same Baptism, recognition of the
authority of the bishops, successors of the apostles, and of the su-
preme authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. At the same time, the grace
and charity that are her very life make her “mysterious.” May I sug-
gest that in place of this term “mysterious,” which has been tradi-
tionally preferred (doubtless to avoid misunderstanding, and the
heretical idea of the “invisible Church” as opposed to the visible
Church), it might be better to say that the Church (who in her very
essence is a mystery), this same Church risible in her structure, her
preaching, her rites, and in the extraordinary fecundity with which she
engenders saints, is also invisible in that which is principal in her and
in her deepest reality: since grace is something invisible, and since, as
St. Thomas writes, “that which prevails in the law of the New Testa-
ment, and constitutes all its virtue, is the grace of the Holy Spirit
given by faith in Christ. The new law is, as to what is principal in it,
the very grace of the Holy Spirit diffused in Christ's faithful.” 10 The
baptised who are in a state of mortal sin are still members of the
mystical Body, members alienated from the life of this whole Body
(the charity 11 ) but who are still tied to the whole and still belong
to it by virtue of a very special relationship with that life; for by
reason of the sacred character with which they were marked by Bap-
tism, God lays special claim to them, and the faith that dwells within
them, however dimmed it may be for many, demands of itself to be

10 Sum. theol. y I— II, 106, I. Cf. Charles Joumet, op. cit., pp. 39-40. “It is the
principal part of the Church — that is, her supernatural being — that is invisible,"
comments Bafiez, “but she manifests herself to the world and she is visible."
(Ibid., p. 42)

11 Can they be called, as they sometimes are, “dead" members, like a “dead"
or rather paralyzed member in a living body? This metaphor runs the risk of
leading us into error. In effect, while they are undoubtedly “dead" members since
they lack grace and charity, they are not merely called to live again, they are also
being wt ked upon by life: because that which gives life to the whole Body still
works from within than (through all the holy things that remain in them, which
arc mentioned in my text), and from the outside through the influences they
receive from the collective charity of the Church. That is why theologians say
that they are members of the Church re, non voto, “in act," but only through an
“influx" which does not convey grace (cf. L'Eglisc du Verbs Incaind, v. II, pp.
1072, 1080).

17S JACQUES MARITAIN

perfected by the virtue of charity. These two elements would already
suffice for membership in the mystical Body, provided that the sinners
did not separate themselves from that Body by an explicit denial of
the faith. But there are many other holy things in them which connect
them indirectly to the life of the whole: grace always solicits them, if
only through the wounds which the loss of it has inflicted; and a
loneliness of soul bitterly reminds them of God. Repentance and
hope bring an immense number of them back to the sacrament of
penance (a sacrament which was instituted for them). Because Hope, i
too, is there; as is also Suffering accepted. And, like messengers of the
memory that the Head of the mystical Body keeps of them, actual
graces, with the inner movements they entail, are passing in them; in
great sinners such singularly profound movements can at certain
moments give rise to quite unforeseen actions. And there are also the
secret influences through which (are they not the favorites of mercy?
Did He not come for them?) the charity which collectively animates
the Church continues to reach them. The life of the mystical Body is
grace and charity. “In the holy Church everything is to love, in love,
for love and from love,” said St. Francis de Sales . 12 Considering us,
average Christians, it does not always look like it. And yet what tokens
we have of that love! St. Francis de Sales saw with the eyes of faith,
which seek the invisible beneath the visible; he spoke of the Church
in terms of that which is her life. The uncreated Soul of the Church is
the Holy Spirit ; 13 her created soul, is charity . 14

12 Preface to Traite de YAmom de Dieu.

15 Cf. Constitution on the Church, Ch. I, Par. 7.

14 Cf. Charles Joumet, Theologie de YEglise (Paris: Desclee De Brouwer,
1958), pp. 193-213. (This work is an abridged version of the first two volumes
of the great treatise UEglise du Verbe IncarnS.) Cardinal Joumet specifies that 1
the created soul of the Church is charity “as cultual , sacramental and oriented
(by the teaching and directives of pastoral authority) .” In other words, I would
say that it is charity as capable of making the body which it animates sufficiently '
one to be able to receive, together with it, a collective supernatural subsistence
that is absolutely proper to the Church, or the seal of the Church's personality. j
“The mystical Body finds its accomplishment only there where the hierarchy is ;
complete and the primacy of Peter is recognized" (Ibid., p. 246). Only there do 1
we find the personality of the Church. t

I apologize for the technical nature of the remarks that follow; I believe they
are necessary, because orn this point I intend to go— in the same direction — a little
further than Cardinal Joumet ( UEglise du Verbe Incami, v. II, pp. 492-508).

Here, then, are what seem to me to be the true positions: the oneness that binds
the faithful together is obviously not a substantial unity, it is the unity of a

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

179

And “the body of the Church is coextensive with her soul; where
the soul of die Church is, there is her body. Where the Church is,
there also is her uncreated Soul, the Spirit of God; and where the
Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace.” 15
One can thus understand better that where the perfect unity of the
mystical Body is lacking, that unity required by personality, and where

multiplicity. Contrary to -what takes pTace here on earth, and which is the province
of the philosophers (in the sphere of nature the complete) unity which is pre-
supposed by personality is the unity of an individual substance, “rationalis naturae
individua substantia”) — the subsistence of which I am speaking does not inform
and therefore does not perfect (with respect to the act of existing) a substance.
It informs or perfects a multiplicity , the soul of which is charity (with the charac-
teristics mentioned by Cardinal Joumet) and the unity of which (one and the
same Baptism, one and the same faith, one and the same jurisdiction) is com-
plete — a multiplicity which by virtue of charity bears supematu rally the image of
oneness of God. The subsistence in question presupposes (in place of substanoe)
that complete or perfect oneness of the multiplicity whose life is charity. And it
transcends the personality of each member of this whole, because what it informs
and perfects (with respect to the act of existing) is supernatural life as received
from God in the complete or perfect unity of the multiplicity itself (and not,
obviously, in each of its members). That subsistence is given by the Holy Spirit,
with and through the outpouring of grace and charity whose source is Christ — but
it is a created subsistence (required by the created soul of Church as well as by
the created body that it animates), a supernatural created subsistence. We find
ourselves here face to face with the mystery of the Church in all its profundity, a
mystery which cannot be explained (the more one might try, the more one would
miss it), but which we must accept in faith; for reason can only establish that no
contradiction is implied here. God save me from denying that infinitely holy
assistance of the Spirit of God by reason of which my teacher and friend looks on
the Holy Spirit as “the extrinsic and efficient personality of the Church”; never-
theless I can see there only a constant influx of the Holy Spirit — supreme fountain-
head of the life of the Church, whose action is such that, as St. Irenaeus said,
“where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is,
there is the Church and all grace.” The Holy Spirit could not constitute the
personality, in the proper sense of the word, that we ought to recognize in the
Church, because personality, property speaking, is an intrinsic and formal perfec-
tion — not an extrinsic and efficient support, as the assistance and the action of the
Holy Spirit are for the Church.

Nor am I forgetting that the personality of Christ marks the personality of the
Church in an incomparably profound manner. (There is an analogy of this — weak
as it may be — in marriage.) But the personality of the Bridegroom, however pro-
foundly it impresses itself on that of the Bride (to the point that they become —
spiritually or mystically — but one person), cannot constitute the personality of
the Bride, nor can the intellectual and moral support of the Bridegroom dispense
the Bride from having her own personality.

18 Charles Joumet, L’Eglkt du Verbs Inc amt, v. II, p. 951-954; Thiologie de
iEgtm f pp. 272-276.

150

JACQUES MARITAIN

charity is not in a fit state to receive the seal of the Church's personal-
ity, there are two distinct cases to consider. The first is the case of the
non-Catholic Christian religious families. I am thinking in particular
of the Eastern Churches separated from the Apostolic See. In the case
of these Churches, which still adore the same Christ, use equally the
baptismal rite, are blessed with the saints that they have engendered,
and certain of which possess an authentic hierarchy, we find our-
selves in the presence of men who are visibly members in act of the
Church, but in a way that not being crowned with perfect unity,
remains imperfect and uncompleted. (I add that if, in the orthodox
Churches, the body and soul of the Church do not bear the seal of the
Church's personality, they are, nonetheless, if I might say so, strongly
attracted by that personality; this is proper to the particular example
that I have chosen. With respect to other non-Catholic Christian con-
fessions, the remarks made above still apply analogously, but to a
lesser, sometimes to a much lesser, degree.)

The second case to be considered is that of the non-Christian
religious families, as well as of the diaspora of the unbelievers and
atheists. There, too, there are men who belong to Christ and to his
Church. In spite of the adverse positions of the religion or anti-
religion that they profess, but aided no doubt, by their natural right-
eousness and their own spiritual experience, they have not refused
the divine gift offered to all. They live— without knowing it— in the
grace of Christ. They are members in act of his Church, but this time
in a way invisible to men , and to themselves , a way that depends
solely on the freedom of the Spirit and that of individual human
beings. In other words, the body and the soul of the Church spread
out together— very far from the center where they have their perfect
unity, and not only deprived of the seal of personality they bear only
in the fully-formed Church, but withdrawn also from its attraction—
everywhere in the world where there are hearts that open themselves
to the grace of Christ, even if they do not know his name. Because
“we know that there is no soul that God does not call to himself by
name." 16 Those who have the grace of Christ and charity in this way
—not outside of the visible Church, but as belonging to her only in a

16 Charles Joumet, ThSologie de VEglise, p. 351. On the “latent" membership
to the Church, whether “normal" before Christ or “abnormal" after him, see the
same work, pp. 360-364.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

181

‘latent” way— are invisibly 17 members of the visible Church . 18 They
are living members of the mystical Body, but members in an abnor-
mal and imperfect state; they are not integrated in act 19 into the
personality of the Church, the invisible effulgence of which they
nevertheless receive, and which reaches them through the secret in-
fluences of prayer or sacrifice, borne by the Spirit of God who alone
knows their immeasurable power .* 0

- * # ☆

The Church is the mystical Body of Christ. And she is also his
Bride.

I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice
in steadfast love and in mercy. ( Hos . 2:11)

Fear not , for you will not be ashamed. . .

For your Maker is your husband. (Is. 54 14-5)

17 In the visible behavior of these men, who have grace and charity within them,
there is certainly (cf. op. cit ., p. 374) a quality which, of itself, is a sign of their
belonging to the Church, but among men no one knows it — not even they. Those
around them attribute it rather to some particular greatness or personal virtue;
and if they make saints of them, they see them as saints of their own spiritual
family. In other words, they themselves, as well as their acts, are no doubt some-
thing visible — and which belongs to the body of the Church; but no one sees
this fact save God and his angels — neither they themselves nor anyone else (except
perhaps, here and there, some Christian friend who has an inkling of it). Thus it
is in a manner invisible to men that the body of the Church is spreading in the
scattered ones who, not embraced in her perfect unity, are not united in act to her
personality. (Further and more complete explanations may be found in Appendix 4.)

They are like petals of a rose perfectly one and beautiful — the normal flower
of a rosebush planted and cultivated by God — which would sprout elsewhere in
the middle of a flower blooming on such or such wild rosebush.

18 See Appendix 4 in the back of the book, On the Unity and Visibility of the
Church.

18 I would say that they tend (without knowing it) to be integrated into it,
since they belong invisibly to the body and soul of the visible Church, which of
themselves ask for their normal fulfillment, that is to say, to be included in her
personality.

‘The witness of the saints of the Orthodox Churches, or the Protestant
Churches, or of Judaism, or of Islam, or of India, if their sanctity is genuine,
would dim the brilliance of the sanctity of the Catholic Church only if the latter
taught that ge»c**c supernatural lifo and sanctity can be found only among those
who belong to her visibly and bodily, and that there is neither supernatural life nor
authentic sanctity those who belong to her invisibly and spiritually, without
knowing ft, by virtue of the grace that they have received^ frotu Christ. The Ckuich
teaches the contrary.’' Charles Joaraet, op. cit. y p. 247.

182

JACQUES MARITAIN

"Christ / 7 says the Council, "loves the Church as his bride, making
himself the model of the bridegroom who loves his bride as he loves
his own body / 7 21

It is in the bringing together of these two names that the unsound-
able depths of the mystery of the Church become perceptible to the
heart. When we say that she is the mystical Body of Christ, or, using
Bossuet’s phrase, "Christ spread out and communicated / 7 we are in-
sisting that she is the Body and the members whose Head is Christ,
he whose divine personality cannot, however, be communicated or
spread. It is therefore in a spiritual or mystical sense — and by virtue
of the graces through which Christ pours out and communicates his
own life beyond his own person— that the Church and Christ make
one person; it is not in the sense in which, among those living here on
earth, head and body make but one. For at the same time the Church
has her own personality, that created personality of which I am try-
ing to speak here, which is not the uncreated personality of Christ. It
is this created personality, distinct from the personality of Christ,
that we stress when we say that she is the Bride of Christ. Truly a
single mystical person with Christ, and truly a person in herself (on
earth and in heaven)— that is what the Church is, and like all mys-
teries hidden in God, this mystery confounds the mind. Truly flesh
of the flesh of Christ, and truly distinct from him.

"The Church as the Bride of Jesus Christ / 7 Bossuet wrote, "is his
by choice; the Church, as mystical Body, is his through an inmost
operation of the Holy Spirit of God. The mystery of the election
through the engagement of promises appears in the name of spouse;
and the mystery of unity, consummated by the infusion of the
Spirit, is seen in the name of body. The word 'body 7 shows us how
much the Church belongs to Jesus Christ; the word 'bride 7 shows us
that she was a stranger to him and that it was of his own free will
that he sought her out. Thus the name of bride makes us see unity
through live and free choice; and the name of body brings us to un-
derstand unity as natural. Something more intimate, then, appears in
the unity of the body, and something more felt and more tender ap-
pears in the unity of the Bride— the name Bride distinguishes, in

21 Constitution on the Church, Ch. 1, Par. 7.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE 183

order to then unite; the name body unites without mingling. . . /’ 22
The Church, says the Council, “is the Immaculate Bride of the
immolated Lamb, the Bride whom Christ has loved and for whom he
has delivered himself up in order to sanctify her, whom he unites to
himself by an unbreakable covenant, and whom he unceasingly
nourishes and cherishes, whom he has willed, having purified her, to
be united with him and subject to him in love and fidelity, whom he
filled for ever with heavenly gift?, in order that we may grasp the love
of God and of Christ for us, a love which surpasses all knowledge/' 23

THE CHURCH, KINGDOM OF GOD BEGUN HERE ON EARTH

I

I

l

1

i

1

The Church is the kingdom of God : the kingdom Jesus came to
announce, and mysteriously inaugurate — begun now on earth and
advancing through the sufferings of the cross toward the plenitude it
will achieve in the world of glory and of the risen.

Christ “inaugurated on earth the kingdom of heaven and revealed
to us the mystery of that kingdom, and through his obedience he
worked our redemption. The Church, or the kingdom of God already
present in mystery, grows visibly in the world, through the power of
God.” That is what the Council teaches. And it says further, “This
kingdom shines forth to the eyes of men in the word, the works, and
the presence of Christ. . . . The miracles of Jesus are the proof that
the kingdom has already arrived on earth: 'If it is by the finger of God
that I cast out demons then the kingdom of God has come upon
you’” (Luke 11:20; cf. Matt. i2:28). 24 And the Church, who “re-
ceived the mission to announce the kingdom of Christ and of God
and to establish it among all nations,” constitutes on earth “the germ
and beginning of that kingdom.”

It matters indeed, is it not so, to all of us who are asking every day
that it come— and to all the hopeless who hope despite everything, in
the anguish and the shadows of that existence which they received
without having been consulted— and even to the neo-Christian think-

22 Lettre d unc demoiselle de Metz sur le mystdre de Vuniti de VEglise et ks
mnyeilks quit renfcrme.

23 Constitution on the Church, Ch. 1 , Par. 6.

24 Constitution on the Church, Ch. I, Par. 3, 5.

184 JACQUES MARITAIN

ers who have discovered that the World has a right to our raptures— it
does matter, in spite of our silly flutterings, to think that it is there,
this kingdom of God is there, as hidden as it may be to our carnal eyes
in the profound life of the mystical Body, behind the necessary
episcopal chanceries and codes of Canon Law.

“The kingdom is already on earth and the Church is already in
heaven. 77 25 “The kingdom, like its king, experiences two phases, one
in which it is veiled and in pilgrimage, the other in which it is glorious
and definitive/ 7 26 To make use of the decisive formula of Cardinal
Journet, the kingdom here on earth is “in a state of pilgrimage and
crucifixion/ 7 For “the Church of the Cross” must precede “the
Church of glory/ 7 27 And why is the kingdom here on earth crucified
with Christ, if not to do with Christ the work of Christ, to accom-
plish that mission of coredemption the importance and necessity of
which has been marked for all centuries by some words of St. Paul (“in
my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of
his body, that is the Church, 77 Col. 1:24), a mission that comes from
“the superabundance of the merits of Christ spreading in his living
members? 77 28 Because “from One only and through One only, we
are saved and we save others,” 29 as Clement of Alexandria said so
admirably. And similarly the Pseudo-Dionysius, whom St. John of the
Cross loved so much to quote: “Of all things divine, the most divine
is to cooperate with God for the salvation of souls 77 ; 30 a thing
which is done by preaching the Truth and by every true witness given
to Love, but above all by the Cross we bear with Christ through all
ages and along all the roads of this world.

As the Council said in regard to the mystical Body of Christ: “Still
pilgrims on earth, following in his footsteps in tribulation and perse-

25 Charles Journet, UEglise du Verbe Incame, v. II, p. 57.

26 Charles Journet, “Le Myst&re de VEglise selon le lie Concile du Vatican”
Revue Thomiste , 1965-I, p. 11.

27 UEglise du Verbe Incarne t v. II, p. 91.

28 Cajetan, quoted in UEglise du Verbe Incarnd , v. II, p. 225.

29 Stromates, Book VII, Ch. II, quoted in UEglise du Verbe Incarnd , v. II,
P . 326.

30 T£moignage d’Elisde des Martyrs, 6e avis, Obras, Silverio, IV, p. 351. In the
translation of Lucien-Marie de S Joseph, p. 1369.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

185

cution, we are associated to his sufferings ( passionibus suis) 31 as the
Body to the Head, united to him in his passion (E i compatientes) to
be united to him in his glory.” 32

THE CHURCH, HOLY AND PENITENT

The Church is without stain or wrinkle , and she is penitent .
There, perhaps, we Tiave the most troubling enigma, and the most
magnificent. The Church is sine macula , sine ruga , she is immaculate,
there is no name for her dearer to Him who loves her: Veni columba
mea , come my dove, my all-beautiful (Cant. 2:10), without stain or
wrinkle, holy and immaculate, sancta et immaculata 33 And I have
always felt with regret, when I think of our dissident brothers who
refuse her this title, scandalizing in their eye, and of certain intimi-
dated Catholics who hesitate to give it to her, that Christ pardons
more willingly the spits on his face than the least doubt on the holi-
ness of his Beloved.

And yet this same Church accuses herself, often in very harsh
terms, she weeps for her failures, she begs to be purified, she pleads
unceasingly for forgiveness (she does so every day in the Lord's
Prayer), she sometimes cries out to God from the depths of the
abyss, as from the depth of his anguish one who fears damnation.

For us to take advantage of that to strike hard on her breast, when
in reality we are speaking either of the failures of the hierarchy or of
the sometimes atrocious miseries of the Christian world, that is a
silliness— in which many young clerics of today do not fail to take
pleasure, as do also many spouters who want to give themselves an
air of freedom of the mind, and to earn the favor of audiences stuffed
with prejudices— a bit of courage would have been enough to make
them more intelligent.

81 “Passionibus suis.” The Council used the same word which is used in the
Vulgate to translate T c ov 8 \ Ifauiv tov Xpiarov, in the text of the Epistle to the
Golossians ( 1 : 24 ) quoted on p. 184.

12 Constitution on the Church, Ch. I, Par. 7.

M St. Paul: “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her that he
might sanctify her, . . . that he might present the Church to himself in splendor,
without stain or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without
blemish ” (Eph. 5:25-27).

iS 6

JACQUES MARITAIN

The truth is that, in the image of the immaculate Christ, the
Church too, is immaculate, but not in the same way as he is. Let us
remember the distinction we made above between the personality of
the Church, a created personality, and the personality of Christ,
which is the very personality of the Word: Christ is "holy, innocent,
undefiled,” 34 because his personality is that of the Word, to whom
his human nature is hypostatically united, and because the members
of that human body that walked along the roads of Galilee and sat in
the synagogues, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, those feet that 1
Mary Magdalene covered with kisses, and that were pierced, those
hands whose touch cured the sick, and that were pierced, never knew
the least contact with sin. In taking upon himself the sins of the |
world he assumed something which was absolutely alien to him, and
.which he made his own through pure love, pure will to substitute
himself as victim for sinful mankind. It is in this sense that St. Paul
says that he was made sin so that we might be saved . 35 He himself
never had the experience of sin. It was by loving union with sinners
that he put on all sin . 36

But the personality of the Church is a created personality, and the
members that make up its body are themselves exposed to sin. "She
enfolds sinners in her bosom.” 37 She herself, therefore, and to what
depths, has experience of sin— "She is all mingled with sin” 38 — in
the countless multitude of all those poor sinners who are her mem-
bers (and who always are, as they were when he went down to eat in

34 Constitution on the Church, Ch. I, Par. 8.

35 2 Cor. 5:21.

36 “In the Garden of Olives Jesus fixed his gaze on the subject of his prayer,
all the sin he would put on and all the dereliction of men and of God . . .

“Darkness of the contemplation of sin, truly merciless night, mystical and un-
soundable night, experience founded in charity and in the loving union of Christ
with sinners . . .

“He tastes the infinite bitterness of our sins, as in the darkness of divine con-
templation the poor saints taste the essential sweetness of God.

“Here the darkness is full, Jesus sees himself abandoned, all justice is accom-
plished, all is given . . .” (Raissa Maritain, “La Couronne d’dpines in Lettre de
Nuit , La Vie donnde , Paris: Descl^e De Brouwer, 1950).

37 Constitution on the Church, Ch. I, Par. 8. “She is therefore/' this paragraph
concludes (and this is precisely the mystery that concerns us here), “at the same
time holy and always working toward purification/*

38 Charles Joumet, Thdologie de VEglise , p. 239.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

187

the house of Zacchaeus, “the friends of Jesus” ): 89 Yet she herself, in-
sofar as she constitutes a unique person— in other terms, in her very
personality, into which all who are her members in act and visibly are
integrated to receive the seal thereof, but which is not their personal-
ity, and transcends it— she herself, in her own personality, in her
personality as Bride of Christ, is without any trace of sin. That is why
when she does penance and asks forgiveness, and accuses herself, and
begs to be purified, she too', in the image of the Lamb of God, takes
upon herself that which is not hers, but she does not take it upon her-
self in the same manner that Jesus did. She takes upon herself some-
thing which is in her, in her own members— something however from
which she herself as a person is absolutely free, since her personality
transcends that of her members. It is a created personality, but one
which spiritually or 4 'mystically 9 — in other words through love, the
love of Christ who willed to unite her to him perfectly and indissolu-
bly in love (not hypostatically, which is quite impossible) — makes
but one person with that of the Lord, Head of the mystical Body.
And that is why one cannot refuse to the Church as a person (as a
created person making spiritually but truly only one person with the
uncreated personality of the Saviour) the name of holy and immacu-
late 40 without casting a slur on the love of Christ for the Beloved he
has united to himself.

Such is the door through which the old peasant passes to enter the
doctrine which Cardinal Joumet has brought to light and which is
one of the blessings we owe to him. I think that one has often mis-
understood this doctrine because one has lost sight of the personality
of the Church, which is constantly in the background of such a great
teaching.

“All contradictions are solved as soon as one has understood that
the members of the Church sin, to be sure, but insofar as they do sin,
they betray the Church; the Church, therefore, is not without sinners,
but she is without sin.” 41

“The Church as a person takes on the responsibility for penance.

L£on Bloy.

40 “ IndefectibilUtr sancta,” says the Council (Constitution on the Church,
Ch. y, Per. 39).

41 Thiologk de VEgLac, p. 239.

1 88

JACQUES MARITAIN

She does not bear the responsibility for sin. If she resembles then
the woman-sinner of the Gospel, it is only at the moment when that
woman pours her perfume over the feet of Jesus. It is the Church's
members themselves— laymen, clerics, priests, bishops or popes —
who, in disobeying her, bear the responsibility for sin; it is not the
Church as a person. One falls into a great illusion when one invites
the Church as a person to recognize and proclaim her sins. One is
forgetting that the Church as a person is the Bride of Christ, whom
he 'acquired with his own blood' (Acts, 20:28), whom he purified
in order that she might stand before him 'in splendor, without stain
or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and immaculate.' (E phes.,
5:27) for she is the 'house of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of
the truth' (1 Tim. 3:15)." 42

"Her true and precise borders circumscribe only that which is good
and pure in her members, both the just and the sinners, encompass-
ing within herself all that is holy, even in sinners, and leaving out all
that is impure, even in the just; it is in our own behavior, in our own
lives, in our own .hearts that the Church and the world, Christ and
Belial, light and darkness, confront one another." 43

42 Op. cit., p. 241. As P&re J. H. Nicolas said so well, “there is no darkness in
her, although, sadly, the sins of her members veil her beauty to the eyes of the
world, bring upon her reproach and insult, and make her suffer before God. If
she asks for pardon it is because she recognizes as her own before God and men
those who commit these sins, but not the sins themselves, which they commit only
in swerving from her/* “La Plume et la Pourpre,” in La Liberte , Fribourg, Febru-
ary 27-28, 1965, p. 6.

43 Op. cit.y p. 244. “The borderline between the Church and the world, light
and darkness, cuts across our own hearts/’ Nova et Vetera , 1963^. 302 (cf. Nova
et Vetera , 1958, p. 30.)

That is true first of all of those who, while committing evil acts which they
promptly confess or which are only venial sins, live habitually a life of grace. (It
is equally true of the just who belong to the Church in only an invisible way —
the word “borderline” in that instance applies no longer to the personality proper
to the fully formed Church, but to her body and her soul — abnormally deprived
of the seal of her personality — to which these just belong invisibly.)

It is also true of the baptized who are in a state of mortal sin. The line of
demarcation still cuts across their hearts, dividing the evil that comes from them
alone, from the good (supernatural to some degree, although insufficient for
salvation: actual graces, and all the holy things that remain in them, of which we
spoke above) which continues to come to them from the Church. And similarly,
the good of a purely natural order continues also, because they are still members
(re, non voto) of the Church, to come to them from this great body which en-
compasses all that is good in the moral life of its parts. They owe this privilege to

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE 189

“It is in the heart of each of us that Christ and the world confront
one another” — in other words, the borderlines of the Church pass
through our owm hearts. “The Church divides in us the good from
the evil. She keeps the good and rejects the evil. Her borderlines pass
through our hearts .” 44 Many years have passed since the day at
Meudon when Abbe Journet first spoke these words, and the impres-
sion they made on me has not Jaded, I still treasure them as particu-
larly precious and profoundly enlightening. Forgive me if I borrow
from a book of mine a page in which I tried to comment on those
words: “The line of demarcation we must consider passes across the
heart of each of us. When a man acts in grace and charity, he lives,
he draws his life from the life of the Church— which is a life of grace
and charity. He is thus a part of her, since any man who has grace and
charity belongs vitally to the Church, whether visibly or invisibly.
Consequently, the actions in question are not only his, they also
manifest in him the life of that whole of which he is a part. His ac-
tions are of the Church precisely inasmuch as they are vivified by the
grace of Christ, regardless of any secondary imperfections they might
allow of.

“But w r hen men act without grace and charity, even if they are
visibly members of the Church, they withdraw from her life, they
strip themselves of the life of the Church. And their actions are no
stain on the Church, on the kingdom of God, because those actions
are not hers.

“The line of water-shed between the waters of the rivers which
spring from the Church and the other is concealed in the inner
recesses of the heart of men.” 45

THE CHURCH, PEOPLE OF GOD

To bring to a close this first section of a long chapter, I would like
to mention still another of the Church's names— the title of people

the “character” that baptism imprinted on their souls. (Those who lack this
“character” and who live in sin are members of the Church only potentially , and
the borderlines of the Church do not cut in act across their hearts as they do, in a
diminished sense, across those of the just who belong only invisibly to the Church.)
Thtologie de I’EgliM, p. 226.

44 Pour uTk€ philosophic dc Vfiittoire, Paris, Seuil, i960, pp. 1 50-1 51.

190 JACQUES MARITAIN

of God , a name to which the Council attached a great deal of im-
portance . 46 People of God, “messianic people/' the name empha-
sizes the “historical dimension" of the Church and turns our attention
toward the greatness of the preparations of the past as well as toward
the glory of the future.

When we pronounce it, our hearts remember the ancient covenant
and the blessed name of Israel — and that descent from Abraham, that
Israelitica dignitas into which the Church asks that the fullness of
the whole world pass . 47 We remember, too, “that it would have
profited us nothing to be born if we had not been redeemed," 48 and
are reminded once more of this beata nox 49 in which, “breaking the
chains of death, Christ rose victorious"; and our hearts turn toward
the kingdom in pilgrimage that was inaugurated by the Resurrection,
and whose ranks are destined to grow in number until the day the
Son of God will come in glory.

As the Council says , 50 “at all times and in every nation, God has
given welcome to whoever fears him and does what is right. It has
pleased God, however, to make men holy and save them not merely
as individuals, without mutual bond; rather has it pleased him to
make of them a people that acknowledges him in truth and serves
him in holiness. He therefore chose the people of Israel as his people.
With it he set up a covenant. Step by step he taught this people,
making known in its history both himself and the decree of his will
and making it holy unto himself. All these things, however, were done
by way of preparation and as a figure of that new and perfect cove-
nant, which was to be ratified in Christ, and of that fuller revelation
which was to be given through the Word of God himself made flesh.
. . . Christ instituted this new covenant, the new testament, that is
to say, in his blood, calling together a People made up of Jew and
Gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the
Spirit. This was to be the new People of God. For those who believe

46 It is the subject of Ch. II of the Constitution on the Church.

47 “Praesta, ut in Abrahae filios, et in Israeliticam dignitatem, totius mundi
transeat plenitudo.” (From the liturgy of Holy Saturday, prayer after the second
prophecy.)

48 Blessing of the Paschal Candle.

4 » Ibid.

00 Constitution on the Church, Ch. II, Par. 9.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

191

in Christ, who are reborn not from a perishable but from an imperish-
able seed through the Word of the living God— not from the flesh
but from water and the Holy Spirit— are finally established as 'a
chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people whom God
purchased for himself, those who once were no people, but now are
God's people' (Pet. 2: 9-10)/'

“The status of this people is that of the dignity and freedom of
the sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as in his
temple. Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us.
Its end is the kingdom of God, which has been begun by God him-
self on earth, and which is to be further extended until it is brought
to perfection by him at the end of time, when Christ, our life, shall
appear." 51

Chosen race , royal priesthood , holy nation , purchased people—
these words designate the whole Church and all of her members. The
royal priesthood under discussion there, which is also referred to as
“the priesthood of the faithful," is common to clerics and laymen. 52
St. Peter, in this great passage, is speaking of all those whom Christ
redeemed, of all the people of God. 53

As Pere Labourdette phrased it, “Sharing in the supreme grace of
Christ, purchased for the redeemed by the sacerdotal act of the
cross, which is the great victory of the messianic King, Christian grace,
in the Church as a whole and in each of her subjects, is a grace at
once sacerdotal and royal: gens sancta , populus acquisition is, regale
sacerdotium. . . . Every Christian, in this sense, is a 'priest/ priest
and king, as is his Head: man or woman, whether coming before

51 Constitution on the Church, Ch. II, Par. 9.

52 The ministerial or hierarchical priesthood differs from it “in essence and not
only in degree,” yet they “are nonetheless interrelated; each of them in its own
special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ/' Ibid., Par. 10.

5g As Cardinal Garrone writes in the introduction to Ch. II of the Constitution
on the Church ( Lumen Gentium, Paris, Centurion, 1965, p. 38): “The people
of God, as the term is used in this chapter, applies to the entire Church and not
simply to the hierarchy. By the same fundamental right everyone belongs to this
Church. All have but one calling and one destiny.” It follows from this that “the
Hierarchy can only, within the people of God, be entitled to render a service: that
of exercising authority'.” And the laity are the great multitude moving, under this
authority', toward the final fulfillment of the kingdom which is not of this world.

1 9 2

JACQUES M ARITAIN

Christ from Adam on, or following him in history, every soul re-
deemed by him has, by reason of his grace, that kind of priest-
hood.” 54 He possesses it “by the same right and to the same degree
that he possesses grace,” 55 that priesthood is “inscribed in Christian
grace. In heaven, where the 'royal priesthood' will have fully flowered
in the people of God and all its members, the liturgy of praise and
thanksgiving will no longer be a means of obtaining grace nor a figure
of a plenitude that is to come, but an expression of inner glory. The
sacramental sacrifice will no longer be celebrated, the sacramental
priesthood will no longer be exercised, nor will the faithful have to
participate in it. That the Christian is both priest and king will then
be confirmed, both for the elect who have never received either the
baptismal or the priestly character, and for the others. This 'royal
priesthood' will endure for all eternity as the fruit of the sacrifice of
the cross.” 56

Summing up Chapter IV of the Constitution on the laity, Cardinal
Joumet points out that the Council is there repeating “with respect
to laymen what had been affirmed in general of all Christian people.
Laymen belong to the people of God, among whom there is 'no in-
equality on the basis of race or nationality, social condition or sex,' 57
they are brothers of Christ, who came to serve, not to be served.
They have a part in the Church's mission of salvation, her prophetic
mission, her royal service . 58 What is new here (evident in the Con-
stitution on the Church, as in the general orientation of the Council)
is a realization no longer secret and painful, but urgent throughout
the Church— not, certainly, of any inadequacy, with respect to the
world, of her essential and structural catholicity, but of the immen-
sity of the effort that must be made, two thousand years after the
coming of Christ, to catch up the ever-growing mass of humanity.

. . . The Church turns toward her lay children with a concern, not

54 R. P. Michel Labourdette, Le Sacerdoce et la Mission Ouvriere (Paris: ed.
Bonne Presse, 1959), pp. 14-15* This short work, with a preface by Msgr.
Carrone, is a doctrinal Note approved by the theological commission (presided
over by Msgr. Garrone) that was constituted to study, on the level of principles,
the problems posed by the apostolate of the worker-priests.

Ibid., p. 54.

56 Ibid., p. 56.

57 Constitution on the Church, Ch. IV, Par. 32.

58 Ibid., Par. 34-36.

TIIE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

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so much to shield them from evil as to send them into the midst of
dangers with God in their hearts, in order to give witness to the
Gospel.” 59

☆

If we wish to enter into the spirit of the Council, and truly follow
its inspiration, it is not only ou£ behavior and our activities, but first of
all, as I noted at the beginning of Chapter 5, our ordinary patterns
of thought which we must renew: and that demands a serious effort
of reason, in order to grasp reality more thoroughly. And the first
reality to consider, that which governs all the rest when we are speak-
ing of the new fire brought by the Council, is obviously the Church
herself whom we must serve better — but whom first of all we must
know better. She herself dealt with this subject in her dogmatic
Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. And she has theolo-
gians to explain and comment on this Constitution. Why, then,
should an old philosopher get mixed up in it? It is surely not his job
to make people know the Church better, and he realizes that better
than anyone. %

But if the Council stirred the whole world, there are few however,
and regrettably, who are sitting down to read its documents (al-
though they have been translated into all languages and widely pub-
lished); and there are still fewer who are sitting down to read
theologians. The least incitation then, from no matter how low a
quarter, that might induce someone to go into a bookstore and buy
and study these documents, can be of use. I am thinking in particular
of the Constitution on the Church , whose language is much easier
to understand than that of the theologians.

Moreover, a testimony may be no great catch, but it is always worth
something, even if only as a mild irritant (which is always good) to
disturb habits of thought too comfortable, and often sloppy— it’s a
not infrequent case with many non-Christians who have no idea of
what the Church is, and so many Christians who have only a medi-
ocre and deplorably superficial idea. (It is hardly their fault; no one
took great pains to teach them.) Reluctantly, then, since I am not

Charles Joumct, "Le Mystkre de I’Eglise scion le He ConciU du Vatican"

Rrni€ I'homiete, 1965, pp. 34-35.

194 JACQUES MARITAIN

completely unaware of my inadequacy, I felt obliged to offer my own
poor testimony.

What vexes me about the venture is that it may possibly make me
have the air of taking myself seriously, even of imagining I am capable,
with cap on my head, of teaching someone something. I have not
taken myself seriously, it is my subject that is serious. On such a
subject I have not wished to teach anyone anything, but simply to
speak my mind: and that, after all, is not such a bold thing to do. It
is true, nonetheless, that one cannot speak of things in which one
believes with all his heart without becoming deeply involved. That
is what I have done, to be sure, while carefully shielding myself be-
hind the powerful shelter of the teachings of the Council and of
those who are the wiser, and have a right to teach on such matters.

I am a little afraid that it will be the same story with the sections
that follow. I can't help it, I will take the risk. I am still going to
speak of things infinitely beyond me— and of which others have real
experience. Let people think what they want of the old peasant; at his
age one has nothing to lose.

Contemplation in the World

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

Speaking to Martha of her sister Mary, the Lord said: unum est
necessarium , and the phrase does not mean, as one of those transla-
tors who today contribute so much to our edification would have it,
“One dish is enough."

One thing only is necessary, it is to be with Jesus, given to his
love. And the Church has always, in her pilgrimage, considered the
part of Mary the most important one in the life of the mystical Body.

We must add that in no other questions more than in those con-
cerning Martha and Mary, has the tendency of our crawling reason to
make the notions it uses paltry, stiff and dull, succeeded in stirring up
vain controversies and confusing the issues.

Nowhere is there greater need of distinguishing in order to unite —
an effort that, as I already noted, our busy contemporaries resent as
supremely incongruous. That is what frightens the old philosopher

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*95

more than ever: not the fear of his contemporaries, to whom he pays
no mind, but fear of carrying out badly a difficult task.

The Carthusians, the Trappists, the Carmelites, all the great con-
templative religious Orders that, with a view to belonging more
completely to God alone, have adopted a mode of life essentially cat
off from the world, wall always be considered by the Church necessary
pillars of her temple, or deeply hidden centers of spiritual revitaliza-
tion that she cannot do without. In these post-conciliar years they
too, as far as I know, feel the urgent need of renewal, in order to
make the flame of the Gospel bum more intensely in their own lives,
and by the same token, still more take on in their prayers and inter-
cession the sufferings of the world, but not at all, thanks to God, to
pull down or crack the sacred walls which shield from the world their
solitude and the spirit they have received from their founders and
from the Paraclete.

But among those who dedicate themselves to the practice of evan-
gelical counsels in an essentially contemplative life, other forms of
consecration to this life have arisen in our days, this time no longer in
separation from the world, but, on the contrary, in the very midst of
the world, and “at the core of the masses/' St. Therese of Lisieux
and Pere de Foucauld have been providential precursors of this great
new movement, which assigns to those consecrated people in the
world , as well as to the Orders at their side who live apart from the
world, the part of Mary in the mystical Body.

I have for long years had the privilege of knowing some of these
new religious brotherhoods. I attended in the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur
the mass of foundation of the Little Brothers of Jesus, who have now
welcomed me in their midst as a kind of old hermit who has always
loved them. For many years I have also known and admired the
Little Sisters of Jesus, as I have known a Dominican community that
—like my friends the Little Brothers, spread out over this thankless
planet or reunited for some years in their huts of studies at Toulouse
—is very close to my heart: the Regular Third Order of Catherine de
Ricci— uncloistcred, contemplative women whose form of poverty
similarly consists in living from the work of their hands (but within
their convent). Before settling in Cr£pieux, they first lived in Belle-
vue, next to Meudon, where Ra'issa, Vera and I passed the best part
of our poor existence; and now they have a house at Toulouse: so

196 JACQUES MARITAIN

that by a singular gift of Providence I can enjoy at the same time the
blessings of common life with my dear Little Brothers, and the fra-
ternal help that these Dominican sisters generously lavish upon me.
This is a good occasion for me to thank God for having kept alive the
great souls whom he inspired to found these Orders, and to affection-
ately greet Soeur Magdalene, the foundress of the Little Sisters, as
well as to ask Pere Voillaume, founder of the Little Brothers of
Jesus, and Mere Marie-Madeleine, foundress of the Dominican Sis-
ters of Cr£pieux, to allow the old peasant publicly to express here the
deep gratitude and the deep friendship that binds him to them
forever.

I have been speaking of the religious orders I know personally
among those which lead a life essentially dedicated to contemplation
in the world. There are certainly other institutions that, whether
taking the vows in a traditionally religious framework or under some
other form, particularly that of secular Institutes, set themselves the
goal of living a contemplative life in the world. I think that they all
are a blessing for our times.

But since I have spoken of the undeserved gifts I have received
from God, I want to mention the greatest of them: that of having
shared, for nearly fifty-five years, since the date (June 11, 1906) when
the three of us were baptized, the life of two blessed ones, Raissa and
her sister, who in the midst of the trials of a very agitated existence,
remained faithful to contemplative prayer without faltering an in-
stant, all given to union of love with Jesus and love of his Cross, and
to the work that, through such souls, he pursues invisibly among
men. They taught me what contemplation in the world is. I myself
was a laggard, a laborer of the intellect, risking by the very fact to
think I was really living certain things because my head understood
them a little and my philosophy could dissert upon them. But I
have been taught, and taught well, by the experience, the sorrows
and the insights of these two faithful souls. That is what gives me the
courage to try to give witness to them, in speaking here of things that
are above me, knowing well that to have been instructed by example
and on the job does not make it easy, far from it, to translate what
one has learned into ideas and words.

Be that as it may, and passing on to more general considerations,
I see one truth clearly: what matters in a very special way, and per-
haps more than anything else, for our age, is the life of prayer and

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*97

of union with God lived in the world , not only by new brotherhoods
such as those I spoke of above, but also by those who are called to this
life in the common condition of lay people with all its turmoil, its
risks and its temporal burdens. And such people arc not as rare as one
might think, and they would become more numerous if their
spiritual guides did not dissuade them from the purpose in ques-
tion, whether because they suppose them incapable of achieving it,
or because they indulge/ as regards contemplation, in a deep and
equally inexcusable ignorance or dis-esteem, or because they consider
it more urgent to organize all laymen of good will in the fascinating
efficacy of collective action, as far as possible technically organized.

There was a time (the “baroque age") when apparently among
some theologians, and in any case in the mass of good Catholics who
were reasonably well-provided with the good things of the earth, the
religious state— that is to say, the state of those who vow themselves
to the search for perfection— was regarded as the state of the perfect
ones, and consequently the secular state was looked upon as the state
of the imperfect ones: in such a way that the duty and function provi-
dentially assigned to the imperfect ones was to be imperfect and to
stay that way; to live a good worldly life, not over-pious, and solidly
planted in social naturalism (above all, in that of family ambitions ). 60
One would have been scandalized had laymen tried to live in any
other way; they had only to make prosper on earth, through pious
foundations, monasteries which were, in exchange, to win heaven for
them; and thus the providential order would be satisfied.

“This manner of conceiving the humility of laymen seems to have
been widespread enough in the sixteenth and sevententh centuries.
That is why the catechism with explanations for the faithful written
by the Dominican Carranza, then Archbishop of Toledo, was con-
demned by the Spanish Inquisition on evidence proffered by the fa-
mous theologian Melchior Cano ." 61 Cano declared “completely
worthy of condemnation the temerity of giving to the faithful a reli-
gious instruction that was only proper for priests. . . . He spoke out
vigorously against the reading of the Holy Scriptures in the vernacu-
lar, and against those who make it their business to hear confessions

00 One finch startling evidence of this point of view in the great work of Louis
Ponnellc and Louis Bordet on the life of St. Philip Neri and the Roman society of
his times (Paris, 1029).

61 Humanism* Integral, p. 129.

198 JACQUES M ARITAIN

all day long. He held highly suspect the zeal displayed by the
‘spiritual’ in inciting the faithful to go to confession and communion
frequently, and he is reported to have said in a sermon that frequent
and widespread reception of the sacraments was one of the signs of
the coming of the Antichrist.” 62

We are far from Melchior Cano and his times— but perhaps not so
far as it might seem. The prejudice must have been a strong one, for
today a Council of the Holy Church had to take care, if I may say so,
to raise laity on the shield, to highlight explicitly its essential role in
the mystical Body, and to remind the world that, according to the
teaching of the prince of the apostles, all members of the people of
God, insofar as they live from the grace of Christ, participate in his
royal priesthood.

And what I want above all to stress here is the force with which
the Council has insisted on the universal range of the Lord’s great
words: “You therefore be perfect, as your heavenly Father is per-
fect.” 63 From which one can conclude that the precept to tend
toward the perfection of charity applies to all . 64 “It is clear that the
call to the fullness of the Christian life and the perfection of charity is
addressed to all those who believe in Christ, whatever their state or
way of life.” 65 The laity, contrary to what Melchior Cano thought
(and well before him, Conrad de Megenburg) 66 “must strive to
acquire a more profound grasp of revealed truth, and insistently beg
of God the gift of wisdom.” 67

A DIGRESSION

(on the temporal mission of the Christian)

The gift of wisdom does not seem to be especially coveted by
those who hold that the vocation of the laity is purely temporal, and

02 Saudreau, “Le mouvement antimystique en Espagne au XVIe siecle” Revue
du Clerge frangais , August 1, 1917.

03 Matt. 5:48. Constitution on the Church, Ch. V, Par. 40.

04 This was the central theme of P£re Garrigou-Lagrange's book, Christian
Perfection and Contemplation (St. Louis, Mo.: Herder & Co., 1946).

65 Constitution on the Church, Ch. V, Par. 40.

66 See p. 166 note 36.

67 Constitution on the Church, Ch. IV, Par. 35.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

*99

entirely directed to the good of the world. In their eyes lay Christians
would have for their only vocation to work to transform the world, a
sacred vocation that should carry the world, thanks above all to the
messianic mission of the proletariat, to the supreme term where it
would be fully humanized in Christ, and installed in a final reign of
justice, peace, and human epanouissement , which they confuse w r ith
the kingdom of God decidedly arrived.

It is clear that prophets who muddle the things of Caesar and
those of God to such a point, are false prophets. Yet they have the
merit of obliging us to ask ourselves in what sense we ought to under-
stand this 'mission to transform the world/' which enfolds in the
same formula a basic truth and equally basic errors.

To transform the world spiritually by means of the Gospel, w'ith a
view to attaining the ultimate end, parousia and the kingdom of God
in the glory of the risen— Christians have known since Pentecost that
they are called to that. But the point in question with what is called
in our day the mission to "transform the world," is something quite
different. The phrase is now used to mean a temporal transformation
of the world with a view to an end which (far from what a Christian
holds to be the absolutely final end)— is the good of the world itself
in development. Further, one then acknowledges for oneself con-
sciously and explicitly the obligation or the mission to work toward
such a transformation.

It might be said that from the time of primitive man until that
wdiich we call the modern age, this explicit notion, which is now so
brightly in the forefront, of such a duty of such a mission, remained
absent from the mind of men and played no role in their history. It
is after a tremendouslv long period of pre-modern history (or, if you
prefer, of modern pre-history) that it began to take form— since about
three centuries, let us say, somewhat allegorically, since Descartes de-
clared that man must become master and possessor of nature. Have
we to say, too, that Christians should long ago have perceived that,
along with their spiritual vocation, the ultimate end of which is
eternity, they also had a temporal task with respect to the world, its
well-being and its transformation? That w'ould be to speak idealistic
nonsense, because (without, moreover, losing sight of the extraordi-
nary effort— quite new in history for its breadth and continuity — of
the works of mercy that have occupied all Christian centuries, at once

200

JACQUES MARITAIN

a substitute and a real preparation for the awareness of a “transforma-
tion of the world” to be accomplished) historical conditions, speaking
concretely, were, neither socially and culturally, nor spiritually ripe
for such an awareness. To tell the truth, that awareness appeared first,
not among Christians, but in a messianic atheism that was at one and
the same time a fruit of modern philosophy and “the last Christian
heresy.” Hence the serious ambiguities from which we suffer today.

Man’s mission to transform the world temporally, it is Marx who
brought it to light; but in the wrong way, because of his atheism, and
of his philosophy (Hegelianism turned upside down) where all
“nature” is absorbed in the becoming and the dialectic process, and
because of his faustianism (to exist is to create, existence precedes
essence, man creates himself by his work). Man, then, is called to a
titanic labor (“arise, titans of the earth,” as is sung in the Inter -
nationale ) that will give him full and complete mastery of the world
and will make him, so to speak, the god of the world.

It seems to me that one of the aspects of Teilhard de Chardin’s
work was (without his having deliberately set himself such an objec-
tive) an attempt to correct this notion; but he corrected it in the
wrong way, because of his evolutionism, very different from that of
Marx, but as radical or even more so, and because of his cosmization
of Christ and Christianity, a sort of reply to “dialectic materialism”
made by means of a cosmo-christic messianism. Man, then, is called
to a divinizing work by means of which he will fully accomplish the
destiny of the world, in the glory of the Risen One, and which will
make him something like the spirit of the world, in the finally
triumphant Christ.

I think that the task of Christian philosophy and theology today is
to give its true meaning to this mission to transform the world tem-
porally, which up to now has been presented in such mistaken per-
spectives. All that I can do as an old philosopher who has already
cleared the land a bit and is now at the end of his life, is only to
sketch out some ideas that I believe to be true (and, of course, some
distinctions that I believe to be well-founded, and terribly necessary).

First of all, we must, it seems to me, distinguish two fundamentally
different ways in which men engaged in the life of the world may work
in the world for the good of the world . From earliest times men have

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201

worked there, in their ordinary affairs, poor daily labors or great im-
perial enterprises, unconsciously (like moss or lichen in the process
of invading a piece of land little by little); and they will continue to
do so forever, pulled along without their knowing it in the movement
of history. This is a first level of action, that of ordinary day-to-day
tasks of temporal life.

The second level is that of a special task in temporal life; the mis-
sion to transform the wofld temporally, this time assumed con -
sciously , with awakened understanding, as free agents capable of
universal purposes.

Christians, like everyone else, have worked and will always work on
the first level of action. And today (in our age of civilization and our
regimes either of free democracy or of constraint) they have to work
also on the second, and, to tell the truth, they alone are in a position
to work well there (supposing, naturally, that they do not lose their
head). To that end it is essential that those who take charge of
guiding such a work in movements or parties of Christian inspiration,
and who have a heavy responsibility with regard to the masses which
follow them, have a particularly rich doctrinal formation and practical
wisdom, enlightening them both about the things of the kingdom of
God and those of the earth, and resting on a theology and a philos-
ophy founded in truth.

But what does it consist in, this transformation of the world which
is the goal of the temporal mission of the Christian? 68 Man will
never be Master and Possessor of nature and history, titan of the
world or divinizator of the world; it is a lie to try to convince him of
such a thing. What is demanded of the Christian is to intervene in
the destiny of the world, winning at great pains and at the risk of a
thousand dangers— through science and through social and political
action— a power over nature and a power over history, but re-
maining, whatever he does, more than ever a subordinate agent:
servant of divine Providence and activator or "free associate” of an

65 To define the vocabulary and avoid all ambiguity, we will reserve the term
“the temporal mission of the Christian ' to describe this task of working for the
transformation of the world; whereas the expression “the temporal vocation of the
Christian” will be used in a much wider sense, which I will stress later. It is un-
fortunate that I have to use terms so similar to one another: their meaning is
completely different.

202

JACQUES MARITAIN

evolution he does not direct as a master, and which he also serves , 69
insofar as it develops according to the laws of nature and the laws
of history (themselves founded on the dynamism of “natures’' ) .

One must understand, moreover, that the Christian can, and must,
ask for the coming of the kingdom of God in glory, but is not en-
titled to ask for— nor to propose as the end of his temporal activity—
a definite advent of justice and peace, and of human happiness, as
the term of the progress of temporal history: for this progress is not
capable of any final term.

Some philosophical considerations are necessary here. Temporal
history, true, tends toward an end, since it implies progress. But the
end to which temporal history tends cannot be the final end; it can
only be an “infra valent” end: that to which a world in becoming
tends, and the becoming of which, both in the cosmic (astrophysical)
order and in the human order, is an evolution, a genesis, a growth that
has no final term here on earth. Two, and only two hypotheses, in
effect, are possible here (I am inclined to the second). One can think
that the becoming of the physical world is indefinite, or, putting it a
different way, that it takes place through successive cosmic phases of
expansion and retraction, progress and regression. In that case, human
history would have to start each time from a new level in recession
with respect to the term attained in the progressive phase (though
probably higher than the starting point of said phase; and this would
go on endlessly). There would be a term for each phase, but no final
term. In this hypothesis the absolutely final end in which the Chris-
tian believes (the advent of the kingdom of God) would come as an
interruption of a becoming (both cosmic and human) that by itself
would have continued indefinitely.

In the other hypothesis (where the cosmic future would not imply
such phases), human history would tend toward a final term which
could only be the perfect natural happiness of mankind, the end of
all the groanings of the creature, and which precisely for that reason
is unattainable. Because while the living conditions of the human

I would love to find a comparison drawn from our human affairs, but I can-
not find a good one. For want of a better one, let us think of the staffs of social
assistants and planners that might have been sent from a more developed country
to the Queen of Babylon and her empire (and who, naturally, would have been
subject to the laws of the latter) .

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2° 3

community would improve, death and corruption would always be
there— along with the aspirations of the human person which trans-
cend the earthly well-being of the community, and to which, suppos-
ing that the person is growing more and more in consciousness, death
and corruption will become more and more repugnant. And human
freedom would always be there, capable of using, either for good or
for evil, more and more powerful means placed at its disposal, so that
progress in good and. progress in evil would move ahead side by side
along the road— all that we can hope is that the first will take prece-
dence over the second.

Hope and anguish would grow together, the groaning of all of crea-
tion “in the pain of childbirth” 70 would still be there, and the expec-
tation that it expresses would become more and more impatient:
the child with whom the world is pregnant would not come out from
the womb of the creature. And the upward curve of the progress of
the world would still continue indefinitely, but in another sense than
in the first hypothesis. It would be an asymptotic curve, human
history tending unknowingly toward the kingdom of God, but in-
capable in itself of reaching this final term. The coming of the king-
dom would not, in that case, be a simple interruption of a becoming
with no final term, it would be rather an eruption by which the di-
vine glory would interrupt the earthly becoming, but in order to lead
it, through a miraculous begetting, to that final term toward which
it is tending with no power to reach it: no longer natural happiness,
but supernatural beatitude.

If you are not satisfied with this interlude of Christian philosophy,
you can at least, assuming that you have the faith, listen to the
revelation of which the Church is the custodian, and which forbids
us to mix up the orders of finality by imagining that the goal of the
temporal mission of the Christian is the coming of the kingdom of
God on earth. This coming will need a new earth and a new heaven,
and the resurrection of the dead. We must be ready to suffer anything
for justice's sake in the temporal struggle, but this struggle does not
claim to eliminate definitively evil, nor to assure definitively the

70 Cf. St. Paul, Rom. 8:22-23: “For we know that the whole creation has been
groaning in the pain of childbirth together until now; and not only the creation,
but w c ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait
for . . . the redemption of our bodies." See Appendix 1 at the back of the book.

204 JACQUES MARITAIN

triumph of good. It is fought to oppose as much as possible the
progress of evil, and to accelerate as much as possible the progress of
good in the world; here is the proper business of Christians fighting
as Christians for the good of the world in a world subject to the law
of time and of becoming.

The temporal mission of the Christian, his mission to transform
the world, has more modest ends than those a Marx or a Teilhard
assign to man, but much more important ends for man, by virtue of
the simple fact that they are not illusory (this counts, all the same) :
to make the earthly city more just and less inhuman, to assure to
every one the goods basically needed for the life of the body and the
spirit, as well as the respect, in each one, of the rights of the human }
person; to lead peoples to a supra-national political organization j
capable of guaranteeing peace in the world— in short, to cooperate j
with the evolution of the world in such a way that the earthly hope
of men in the Gospel should not be frustrated, and the spirit of
Christ and of his kingdom would in some fashion vivify worldly
things themselves. Such a work needs to be thus vivified, for without
the strengthening assistance of Christ's grace our nature is too weak
to carry it out. Justice without love is inhuman, and love for men and
for peoples, “which goes well beyond that which justice can accom-
plish," 71 is itself fragile without theological charity. Without the
love of charity, work as we might, we will work nothing.

And these very ends of the temporal mission of the Christian— not
to be confused with either the absolutely final end which is the full
coming of the kingdom of God, or with a final term, supposedly at-
tainable, of the earthly becoming— we well know that, if they are
possible of themselves (not illusory), they will still never, as a matter
of fact, be attained in a fully complete and fully satisfying way here
on earth. Those who fight for such a purpose know that they will al-
ways be resisted, will win only contested successes, and that they will
often fail. But what they do they will do well, if they do it truly as
Christians.

Let us add finally that the struggle they are conducting in the
temporal order in full faithfulness to the spirit and the teachings of ]
Christ, is the proper task (to very different degrees, because some

71 Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Ch. V, No. 79, Par. 2.

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2° 5

guide and others follow) of Christians who live in the world: they
conduct the struggle at their risk and peril. They are helped in this
battle by the counsels they receive from the Church, and without
which they could do no good; and they can even be helped in that re-
spect by the Church in another fashion, in particular cases, when her
ministers, facing an especially serious situation, judge it their duty to
raise their voices and to intervene in the temporal order by a word of
truth, giving witness to diyinf precepts. In any case, for the Church it
is always only a question of helping the world to resolve its problems,
not resolving them for it.

ANOTHER DIGRESSION
(ON THE CONDITION OF THE LAYMAN)

AND END OF THE INTRODUCTION

I apologize for this long digression. To tell the truth it was an-
nouncing another. Because the temporal mission of which I was
speaking, a concept that has only appeared in our modem age, is far
from constituting all the temporal activity of the Christian working
in the world. We must go on, then, to a completely different order of
questions, more general and more fundamental, which no longer con-
cern the temporal mission (of transforming the world) that lay
Christians of today, at least those who feel a “calling” to it, acknowl-
edge as pertaining to them (Im finished with that, I won't come
back to it any more), but which concern the layman himself.

As soon as one reflects a bit seriously on the condition of the lay-
man, one perceives that it is not as easy as it seems to understand it
exactly, and moreover that it involves a rather troubling problem
which we must try to clarify. The Christian layman, in effect, has two
different vocations; one spiritual, the other temporal, to each of
which nevertheless, he must respond fully, and even while doing his
daily task. And in addition he himself is the subject of a deplorable
ambiguity of vocabulary, at least in a language like French: in his
quality of layman, the layman is of the world , is he not, as he is of the
human city (this is expressed in Latin by the genitive: “cst aliquid
mundi’), and he works (even without the least deliberate purpose)
for an end which is uot the ultimate end, but the well-being of the

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world, its beauty, its progress. And in his quality as a member of the
Church he works for the final end which is the kingdom of God fully
consummated, and he is not of this world; he is in the world without
being of the world (this is distinguished in Latin by the ablative:
“non est de hoc mundo, non est de mundo ''). He is of the world
without being of this world? We ought to look at this closely.

Let us note first of all that the word “layman” belongs originally to
the language of the Church. “The notion of the layman includes all
the positive values and the richness of membership in the Church,
all the fullness that the name Christian implies. The word 'layman'
designates a member of Christ, a member who may be a sinner and
therefore at present dead, but who normally lives with the activities
of the royal and sacerdotal grace received from Christ. Through the
sacraments of Christian initiation— Baptism and Confirmation— he
entered fully into the ecclesial society, the mystical Body of Christ;
besides grace he received certain 'characters' which integrate him
into the sacramental organization of the militant Church and depute
him in a permanent manner to taking part in the celebration of the
holy cult, not to administer the sacraments but to receive their ef-
fects— which is also a power, a supernatural capacity derived from
the priesthood of Christ, but this time in terms of the sacramental
economy. ... In the proper sense, the layman is no less of the
Church than the priest; as baptized and confirmed, it is to the Church
that he belongs, it is toward her and her grace-giving activities that he
is turned, it is in those terms that he is defined. He is part of an
eschatological kingdom whose life he must endeavor to lead, and to
which the Christian community all together must give witness in the
eyes of the world.'' 72

Thus the layman— let us say, to adapt ourselves to the current
idiom, the Christian layman— is in the full sense of the word a mem-
ber of the Church. Hence it follows that he is not of this world (de
hoc mundo) as the Church is not of this world; Regnum meum non
est de hoc mundo ( John 18:36). Ego non sum de hoc mundo ( John
8:23). “They are in the world'' ( John 17:11 ), but “they are not of the
world, even as I myself am not of the world ( John 17:16).'' Hence
it follows too, that the layman has a spiritual vocation, and that he
has been appointed to work for the kingdom of God (a kingdom that

72 Michel Labourdette, O.P. Le Sacerdoce et la Mission ouvriere, Paris, 6d.
Bonne Presse, 1959.

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has already come in a state of pilgrimage and crucifixion, but is still
to come in its plenitude).

What, then, of his relationship to the world? And how can he be
something of the world, and appointed to work for the good of the
world? The answer, in my opinion, is to be found in the fact of his
double birth: he was born twice, as is every Christian. He was born of
the world, and in original sin, as all men are when they come from
their mothers' wombs." Afid By baptism he was born again, he was
born of God. (One can say as much also, though in a much less com-
plete sense, of those who are invisibly members of the visible Church,
and who, without having the character and grace of baptism, are
nonetheless born anew, they too, with the life of the grace of Christ
and of charity; but it is not of them I am speaking here.) It is by
virtue of this new birth that, from the day of his baptism, he is a
member of the Church and not of this world.

And of his first birth he retains nothing as concerns the sin of
Adam (except the weaknesses and inner disorder our nature has in-
herited from it)— he is delivered from this sin insofar as it prevents
him from entering into beatitude and the vision of God. He is
washed, rescued, redeemed by the grace of Christ. But he keeps, like
everyone else, being a man in the world; and further— if he does not
decide to dedicate himself either to the cult of God and the power of
giving the sacraments by becoming a priest, or to the search for perfec-
tion by embracing the religious state (being, in either case, even
more deeply in the second instance than in the first , 73 separated from
the world and from the ordinary human vocation)— he also keeps the

78 Members of religious communities who live in the very midst of the world
(not separated or shielded from it in as externally visible a sense as those who
have chosen cloistered life) are nonetheless, by virtue of their vows and their
consecrated state, and the duties which that state imposes on them, intrinsically
separated from the world.

And to a certain degree the priest also (a good many of them, today, do not
like this, but that's the way it is) is separated from the world by virtue of his
dedication to the cult and to the administration of the sacraments. He is no longer
a laborer of the world, nor assigned to a temporal mission aiming at the good of
the world. He is no longer answerable to the temporal order except, if I may say
so, by lending himself to it, and in order “not to scandalize thc-in," as Jesus said
to Peter with respect to the tax collectors, ut non scandalixemus cos: “But that we
may not scandalize them, go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that
coruies up. And opening its mouth you wilt find a stater; take that and give it to
them for me and for you." (Matt. 17:27)

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ordinary human condition and vocation that come to us by virtue of
our first or natural birth (washed of sin by the second). A member of
Christ and of the Church, he is no longer born of the world , he is no
longer de hoc mundo; but finding himself in the ordinary state of life
in which men are placed by virtue of their being bom here below, he
has to work for the good of the world and is something of the world
(in the genitive, aliquid mundi ): what word may I use? He is a
laborer of the world: (I do not say a “member” of the world, because
the world does not have organic unity.) The layman is a member of
only one universal body — the Church, which embraces heaven and
earth. And as a laborer of the world he is also of the world , a fact
which prevents him in no way from being no longer of the world , no
longer de hoc mundo , by virtue of his second birth.

That is, if I have reasoned correctly, how the ambiguity implicit in
the word layman is resolved.

And that, too, is how the layman does have two distinct vocations:
a spiritual vocation as member of the Church; and a temporal voca-
tion as a laborer of the world, as a member of the Church who is a
laborer of the world. The two vocations are distinct, they are not
separate. He is not a laborer of the world with a certain portion of his
being, and a member of the Church with another portion: it is the
member of the Church who is the laborer of the world, sent to the
land of the things which are Caesar ’s.

His temporal vocation, his vocation as a laborer of the world
(which covers only a part of his life and his activity — obviously the
larger part and the part which demands more of his time), is to as-
sume the ordinary tasks of the secular condition. His spiritual voca-
tion, his vocation as a member of the Church— -which is distinct from
his temporal vocation but which must inspire it, because it covers his
whole life and all his activities— -is to live more and more profoundly
the life of the mystical Body, and therefore first of all to watch over
his own soul and to respond as well as possible to the precept (ad-
dressed to all within the Church) of tending to the perfection of
charity; to participate in the sacraments of the Church and her wor-
ship; and to participate also (a point that the Council particularly
emphasized) in her apostolate.

What form should this participation in the Church's apostolate
take? Many different forms (of which one only, as I will emphasize

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209

in a few minutes, is absolutely fundamental and required of all).
More distinctions? It can't be helped; what is at stake is worth the
trouble.

There are many different cases to consider: that, for example, of
Catholic Action properly so called, where certain laymen participate
in the apostolate of the Church, with a special mandate from her, in
organizations whose activities involve, by reason of this mandate, the
Church herself and.thfc frierafehy. These organizations, which were
born of the initiative of Pius XI, undoubtedly play an important role,
but in a restricted sphere.

Next are a great variety of cases, and I can only speak of them in
general terms: from the case of certain laymen (still laymen and
laborers of the world, sometimes even in positions of power) who
participate in the apostolate of the Church in groups that partake
more or less of the nature of the religious state (of itself, separated
from the world), to the much more common case where laymen like
others participate in this apostolate by cooperating with movements
or works dedicated either to the development of spirituality (retreats,

| for example) or to a missionary task. These varied forms of participa-
tion in the apostolate of the Church have two things in common:
they are, to a greater or lesser degree, under the direction of the
clergy, and they are, on the other hand, for those laymen who devote
part of their time to them, extra activities. Good, useful, excellent,
f let us not lose sight of the fact that we are running the risk— by the
very fact that they are special and particularly remarkable forms of
participation in the apostolate of the Church, whose usefulness is self-
► evident— of being mistaken about them. How? By somewhat heed-

lessly limiting the participation of laymen in the apostolate of the
Church to these forms, and by believing that this participation con-
sists only in them.

That is not the case. All these diverse forms of the lay apostolate
are optional. But there is one that is absolutely basic and necessary
for all , and this one has a properly fundamental importance: I mean
the apostolate that laymen exercise in their daily tasks themselves (in
the ordinary labors of the life of the world ), 74 and in all their activi-

74 There We have the first temporal level of action that i alluded to (p. 201 ) —
that which is absolutely universal, and in which every (Christian) layman has been
involved ever since there have been Christians.

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ties, if they acquit themselves as Christians in these labors and
activities. Their spiritual vocation and their temporal vocation, then,
have to do with the same work : the temporal vocation having to do
with the object of this work, the spiritual vocation having to do with
the mode or the manner in which it is accomplished, the spirit in
which it is done . 75

As soon as a layman lives from the life of Christ and of the mystical
Body in the depths of his soul, and does not imagine that when he
does his ordinary task as a layman he should, under the pretext that
he is a layman, seal in those depths of his soul faith, fraternal charity,
and the love of Jesus which inhabits his heart; as soon as he grants the
Good News that he carries within himself its freedom of movement;
in short, when he never forgets , whatever he does, that he is a Chris-
tian; in other words, when he does as a Christian everything that he
does : 76 then the spirit which animates him will radiate from him,
and he will give witness to the Gospel, not by preaching it, but by
living it, and by the manner in which he carries out the most banal
tasks. And that will happen without his having to think of exercising
an apostolate: the less he thinks of it, the more it will be worth! It is
from itself and as if instinctively, that the testimony of the Church
will pass through him; it is enough for this that this Christian should
never hide— either from himself or from others— that he is a Chris-
tian; it is enough that he should never have before others, through
fear of offending what they think to be proper, any kind of shame in
being a Christian.

Obviously, to act as a Christian one must be as instructed in the
Christian verities as is possible, according to one's state and the role

75 “They live in the world, that is, in each and in the all of the secular professions
and occupations they live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from
which the very web of their existence is woven. At this place they are called by God,
so that, by exercising their proper function as led by the spirit of the Gospel, they
may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven. In this way
they may make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life re-
splendent in faith, hope and charity .” (Constitution on the Church, Ch. IV,
Par. 31)

76 That is what the apostles’ teaching tells us: “Whether you eat or drink, or
whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). (Cf. Col. 3:17 and
1 Pet. 4:11)

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211

one may have to play in cultural and political life . 77 Obviously also,
some laymen animated by the spirit of the Gospel may be led to
form more or less short-lived groupings born spontaneously out of
friendship , and which are neither denominational nor under the di-
rection of the clergy, but which will still demand from those who
animate them a more extensive doctrinal preparation. These, how-
ever, are particular cases and I am now speaking, on the contrary, of
that which is common to all , the radiance of the Gospel shining
through the daily task itself. The medium through which this radi-
ance passes may be sometimes a simple brotherly word, a look, a
gesture, the spontaneous manner of reacting to an event, one of the
almost imperceptible signs (so much more important than is usually
thought), one of these microsigns of the physics of the soul that are
registered in the unconscious and that our fellow-beings perceive with
such redoubtable infallibility. Or else it may be more tangible evi-
dence— a word of truth, a concrete engagement, a pardon granted, a
sacrifice, a perhaps grave risk taken for the good of someone else or
for justice's sake. That truth is always there, that whatever task he
performs, a Christian can, and must, perform it as a Christian. I have
said often enough in this book that one can philosophize as a Chris-
tian. One can also teach history, literature, even mathematics as a
Christian— not by trying to make mathematics say something Chris-
tian, but in praying for one's students and loving them, and by the
very manner in which one treats them, and the very manner in which
one teaches, for teaching is something concrete that betrays, without
our noticing it, many things that we have within us, and through
which we are in a human relationship with others, while speaking to
their minds. One can practice medicine as a Christian, direct a busi-
ness as a Christian, be a carpenter, a potter, an automobile mechanic
as a Christian; one can be a factory hand as a Christian (not, no
doubt, while working on the production line, but there are always
one's “buddies" and the pub where one goes to have a drink with
them). Human relationships extend everywhere. And wherever there

77 We have already discussed (pp. 198-205) the temporal mission of the
Christian (which has for its goal the “transformation of the world,” and which
is on another level of temporal activity, where the layman is not merely a laborer
of the world but an activator of the world). To act as Christians , those who guide
others need then a particularly complete doctrinal formation. I am not speaking
of that here because it is a special task of the secular life.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

are human relationships, the Gospel, if we live it, introduces of itself
its testimony, through the manner in which we act.

I am dwelling on all this because it is the very consequence of the
all important truth discussed above on the subject of the lay Chris-
tian, a member of the Church who is a laborer of the world, and
whose spiritual vocation covers his whole life.

For many centuries our Western civilization has suffered from a
fatal separatism, an unnatural gash or cleavage— everywhere, on all
levels of activity— between the temporal work of the lay Christian and
the spiritual vocation he owes to what he is: a member of the People
of God. It is this evil that one must remedy first of all.

☆

So much for my two digressions. They help us, perhaps, to see
more clearly the implications and the practical consequences of that
call to holiness, and to a real and personal participation in the life
of the mystical Body, of which the Council so vigorously reminded
all members of the People of God, laymen as well as others.

“The Lord Jesus, the divine teacher and model of all perfection,
preached holiness of life to each and every one of his disciples of
every condition. He himself stands as the author and consummator of
this holiness of life: 'You therefore are to be perfect, even as your
heavenly Father is perfect' . . .

“Thus it is evident to everyone that all the faithful of Christ of
whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian
life and to the perfection of charity." 78

All are called to holiness— I am thinking of my old godfather Leon
Bloy and of that great phrase of his which echoed so powerfully in
many hearts: “IZ riy a quune tristesse , c'est de rietre pas des saints."
(“There is only one sadness; it is not to be a saint.”)

I am also thinking that in order to answer this call addressed to all,
the important thing is to start out, wherever one happens to be, in
relying entirely on the grace of God; yet to advance along this road,
where, with respect to that which comes from man, everything is so
difficult, and so marvelously disposed with respect to that which
comes from God, there are certain normally indispensable aids that

78 Constitution on the Church, Ch. V, Par. 40.

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21 3

we receive, on the one hand, from the liturgical life of the Church
(above all, the sacrifice of Mass); on the other hand, from the com-
munion of the soul with its God in oraison (I am using the French
word because orison has become obsolescent)— let us say, in wordless
prayer of love, and in that union of love that we call contemplation.
(To translate oraison , I shall henceforth say “love-prayer” or “con-
templative prayer.”)

There are some question* to be cleared up here, and which are not
easy. I shall try to say a few words about them in the following
section.

THE TWO NECESSARY AIDS
ON THE NEVER-ENDING ROAD

I would like to submit here only a few reflections of a very general
nature on the two normally necessary aids for men who have heard
the call addressed to all, and who are stumbling ahead along a road
whose final end is not of this world. (The road is not of this world
either, although we move along it in the world, and it is precisely be-
cause of that that we cannot see the end.) The first aid is the com-
mon prayer of the Church (“common” is the right word; “commun-
itarian” is, in the present instance, a bastard word in which one finds
delight only because it sounds social-minded). The second aid is what
is called “private” prayer (a bad word, because when one is with
Jesus, Mary, and all our friends in heaven, right in the midst of the
invisible communion of saints, one certainly doesn't lack company)
—let us rather call it contemplative oraison which comes about clauso
ostio (or in the desert where there are no doors, or even in interior
solitude when the doors have been broken open).

On one hand, therefore, we have liturgical prayer, which has the
unparalleled privilege of being centered on the Mass; on the other
hand, contemplation, which has the wonderful privilege of making
the heart, in a union of person to person, listen to Jesus present
within it. These two privileges are eminent signs of the essential
distinction that we must make between the liturgy of the Catholic
Church (and of bcf separated sister-Churches in the East) and the
ritual services of other religious families, however venerable they may

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JACQUES MARITAIN

sometimes be; as well as between the supernatural and the natural
mystique, no matter how far the latter may sometimes advance in in-
terior concentration. These two distinctions, moreover, do not over-
lap: the first having to do with the cult, which is visible, the second
having to do with a spiritual experience that, when it is supernatural,
presupposes the habitual regime of the gifts of the Spirit— which is
not the case with the natural mystique, even in souls inhabited by
grace.

LITURGY

Raissa and I published, some years ago, a little book entitled
Liturgy and Contemplation , 79 I shall not retrace here the positions
that we advanced, except to state that I adhere to them more firmly
than ever. But I would like to dwell on one point that, with respect
to the liturgy, seems to me of primary importance.

In the public worship that the Church offers to God, the holy work
in which we participate is accomplished at one and the same time by
the mystical Body and by its Head, by the Church and by Christ him-
self. “The sacred liturgy is . . . the public worship which our Re-
deemer as Head of the Church renders to the Father as well as the
worship which the community of the faithful renders to its Founder,
and through him to the Heavenly Father. It is, in short, the worship 1
rendered by the mystical Body of Christ , in the entirety of its Head
and members. . . .” 80

That is true of all liturgical functions— the liturgy of the sacra- .
ments or the common recitation of the canonical hours: Christ is
always there, either to act through the agency of the one who admin-
isters the sacrament, or to be in the midst of those who are gathered
together in his name. But this is true of the Mass in an absolutely
eminent sense, because the Mass is the act or the sacramental mys-
tery by means of which Christ perpetuates on earth and in time, until
the end of centuries, the sacrifice from which the Church draws her
life. That is why, even if we imagine the most dire prospects of

79 New York, P. J. Kenedy and Sons, i960.

80 Pius XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei et hominum , November 20, 1947. Official
English version (The Sacred Liturgy), Vatican Polyglot Press.

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21 5

universal persecution, I do not believe that God will ever permit that
a single day pass without at least one Mass being celebrated in the
world. The Mass is thus the center, uniting heaven and earth, of the
life of the kingdom of God in its earthly pilgrimage. It is also the
center of the worship that the Church offers to Christ and to his
Father. The sacrifice of the Mass is the center to which all other
elements of the liturgy relate . 81

At a certain moment "during the Mass (and that is why the “sacred
silence” 82 is then demanded), there is a kind of divine flash of light-
] ning; at the words of the double consecration (which, from the fact
that it sacramentally separates the Body of the Lord from his Blood,
is an efficient sign of his death on the cross), Jesus makes himself
present on the altar in the state of a victim: suddenly and mysteri-
ously, during a few minutes of our lives, the sacrifice in which he gave
himself for us is there before us, his supreme offering of himself to
the Father, the act by which he won for all men the grace of redemp-
tion. At the Mass the faithful do not sacrifice with the priest; the
priest alone, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, has the
power to sacrifice. The faithful possess by virtue of their Baptism
another sort of power, the power to unite themselves to the priest in
the offering of the sacrificial victim (and also, like the priest, to be
nourished by the Body of Christ after he has been nourished by it in
the sacramental communion in which he consumes the sacrifice).
11 They act, then, in their very title as visible or sacramentally marked
members of the Church who, in union with her Head, and in a sacred
rite performed in common with him, offer to God the Lamb that
. takes away the sins of the world. If in the same sanctuary there are
present unbaptized souls who seek God, it is possible that during the
Mass they receive greater graces than some of the baptized present,
yet, having not the mark of Baptism, they are not included in the
sovereign act of adoration and thanksgiving that the Church is
accomplishing.

81 Everything in the lituTgy relates to the Mass, either directly and explicitly, as
is the case with all that is done during the Mass itself, before the sacrifice (the
readings and the scrtnon) and after it — or else indirectly and implicitly, as is the
case in the liturgy of the sacraments and the sacramcntals, or in the recitation of
the canonical hours, or in the cycle of the liturgical year. That is why I speai; here
especially of the Mass.

92 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Par. 30.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

When we meditate on all this a bit, it seems to me that we see
several things a little better. In the first place we see more clearly the
essentially collective or common aspect of the liturgical celebration.
It is a single Body that acts, in union with its Head, and it is precisely
as a member of this Body, taken into the action of the Body and
participating in it, that each of the faithful gathered in the common
celebration offers to God the worship that is due to him.

In the second place, one sees a bit better why it is necessary to say
that the celebration of the Mass is the most exalted act that can take
place on earth, and that “the liturgy is the summit toward which the
activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the fount
from which all her power flows.” 83 That is obvious, since in the
Mass, the center of the whole liturgy, it is the Head of the mystical
Body himself, the Incarnate Word, who, while still remaining in
heaven, makes himself, as well as the supreme act that he accom-
plished on the cross, invisibly present on earth; and it is to his action,
an action of God made man that the priest and the community of the
faithful are united, the latter as well as the former by virtue of the
sacrament whose character he bears (Holy Orders for one, Baptism
for all).

In the third place, one sees a bit better how the end that Christ
himself (with the entire Church) intends and attains in the celebra-
tion of the Mass, wherever held, let us say the divinely attained aim
of this celebration, is the common act of offering and adoration that
Christ himself and the Church accomplish through the medium of
a tiny part of the Church— a local assembly offering its worship to
God on such and such a day and in such and such a church or chapel.
The priest may have all the human weaknesses possible, the faithful
may be as distracted and inattentive as can be (as is the case in many
funeral masses, which are nevertheless very moving when accompan-
ied by the old traditions of the poor people, and in many masses to
celebrate the annual reopening of civil institutions): if one does
what he has to do, in performing the sacrifice that sanctifies the
Church, whatever may be the case with others, who should be unit-
ing themselves at the same moment to the offering of the sacrificial
Lamb, the divinely attained aim will certainly have been attained, the

83 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Ch. I, Par. 10.

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217

act of offering and of adoration that the Church wanted to perform
will have been performed, the Mass will have been celebrated.

Undoubtedly; but assuming the conditions that I have mentioned,
the aim divinely attained by means of men will have been attained,
but badly attained as far as men are concerned; the work that the
Church wanted to accomplish will have been accomplished, but badly
accomplished as far as men are concerned; the Mass will have been
celebrated, but badly* celebrated on the part of men. For what is in-
volved is a holy work, and therefore the celebrant as well as the faith-
ful should there be recollected in God as far as possible; the celebrant
himself should lead as saintly a life as possible, and the faithful, too,
should strive toward such a life. That is why the liturgical reform, so
necessary and so long awaited, insists so earnestly that the faithful
“should participate consciously , devoutly and actively in the sacred
action \* 84 this is done by speaking and singing as public worship de-

M “They should leam to offer themselves ; through Christ their Mediator , they
should be drawn into ever more perfect union with God and with each other t
so that finally God may be all in all/' Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Par. 48.
Let me observe that, as regards the application of this precept, many commentators,
when they come to the formula quoted here in my text (all in italics in the Con-
stitution itself) put strong emphasis on the word actively , without giving the
same attention to the word devoutly , which receives the same emphasis in the
Constitution. Let me point out also that the word actively itself refers to the inner
movement of the soul as much as (and even much more, according to the teach-
ings of the Encyclical Mediator Dei) to the external activity of the voice.

Finally, I would like to make one last remark. (I know that this will displease
many people, but I can’t help it, truth obliges me to speak.) If, among those who
assist at Mass, there are prayerful souls who find themselves so drawn to inner
recollection that they can neither speak nor sing, nor participate actively in the
liturgy except on the highest level, one should leave them to their silence and
respect in them the liberty of the Spirit of God.

1 read in a pamphlet published in 1957 by Mile. Madeleine Basset on the little
servant of God, Anne de Guign6, who died at ten and one-half years of age, that
toward the age of eight or nine she asked her mother one day: “Mama, would you
let me pray without a prayerbook during Mass, because I know the prayers by
heart and I am often distracted when I read them, but when I speak to Jesus I
am not districted at all. It is like talking with someone, Mama, one knows well
what oue is saying.” — “And whit do you say to Jesus?” — “That I love him, then
I talk to him about you, about the others [her brothers and sisters, her relatives],
that Jesus might make them good. I talk to him most of all about sinners. And
then, I tell him that I would like to see him. . . .” This little girl did not have a
special duty like the priest or the altar boy, to pronounce the words required for
tnc sacred function. The silenoe in which she spoke to Jesus had without a doubt
much moie value than if she had sung, under duress, even the Gloria or the Credo.

2 1 8

JACQUES MARITAIN

mands; but words and song alone do not suffice, the inner attention
of the soul is needed, and a desire for God . 85 Indeed, the faithful do
not assist well at Mass, and do not participate well , unless, according
to the vast diversity of the conditions of each one, there is in them,
be it in the most implicit and unapparent manner, by a mere sigh of
the soul, a response to that universal call to sanctity on which the
Council has also insisted.

Finally, in the fourth place, and this is the point I was coming to,
one understands a bit better why the liturgical life is a normally neces-
sary aid for those who set out toward the perfection of charity. Be-
cause in the Church, and in an infinitely more real sense than in all
other “societies” worthy of the name, is verified the principle that the
common good is a good common to the whole and to the parts; or in
other words, the common good flows back finally on to the parts, who
are human persons. It is by virtue of the work accomplished in com-
mon in the liturgical celebration, and the sanctification that flows
back from it to each of those who have truly participated, that Chris-
tians who endeavor to advance toward sanctity are made better able

85 After having reminded us that the liturgy is at the same time an interior and
an exterior worship, Pius XII, in the Encyclical Mediator Dei , strongly emphasizes
that “the chief element of divine worship must be interior. For we must always
live in Christ and give ourselves to Him completely, so that in Him, with Him and
through Him the Heavenly Father may be duly glorified. The sacred Liturgy re-
quires, however, that both of these elements be intimately linked with each other.
This recommendation the Liturgy itself is careful to repeat, as often as it pre-
scribes an exterior act of worship . . .

“Very truly, the Sacraments and the Sacrifice of the altar, being Christ's own
actions, must be held to be capable in themselves of conveying and dispensing
grace from the divine Head to the members of the mystical Body. But if they are
to produce their proper effect, it is absolutely necessary that our hearts be rightly
disposed to receive them. . . . These members are alive, endowed and equipped
with an intelligence and will of their own. It follows that they are strictly required
to put their own lips to the fountain, imbibe and absorb for themselves the life-
giving water, and rid themselves personally of anything that might hinder its
nutritive effect in their souls."

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy presupposes the teachings of Mediator
Dei; it did not have to repeat them, because its object is first of all to reorganize
the liturgy in practice. The Constitution does not, however, fail to note that “in
order that the liturgy may be able to produce its full effects, it is necessary that the
faithful come to it with proper dispositions , that their minds be attuned to their
voices, and that they cooperate with divine grace lest they receive it in vain
(Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Par. n.) Concise formulas that, if we read
them with the proper attention, go extremely far (as do those quoted above, at the
beginning of the preceding note), and that confirm what I have tried to say here.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

21 9

to move forward. What they have done during the celebration, they
have done as members of the whole. What they receive , they receive
ultimately as persons.

And I am not speaking of the special graces of light and love that
one or another may receive from a single word of the liturgy that
strikes the heart by surprise (and seems sometimes to have been said
for you), nor am I speaking of the sort of release and liberation 86
that sacred song (availing itself of the natural grace of music) often
has the power to produce through the native tenuousness of the hu-
man voice. (This is not the case with loud-speakers.)

The conclusion of these reflections can, it seems to me, be formu-
lated thus: it is essential to the Christian to be at one and the same
time person and member; and he is always both, since these two as-
pects of him are distinct but cannot be separated. I observed a mo-
ment ago that in the liturgical celebration Christians are sanctified first
of all through the flowing back on each one of the good accomplished
through their common work. It is not above all, therefore, by what he
does as a member of the whole, in doing his part of the work of the
whole, it is above all by what he finally receives as a person on whom
the good of the whole is flowing back, that the Christian is then sanc-
tified, and that the liturgy is for him an indispensable aid in his prog-
ress toward God.

I have just said that this aid is indispensable, that it is normally
necessary. It should be added that God's ways are infinitely gentle , 87
and take into account the conditions and possibilities of each, in their
limitless variety. So much the better if we have the possibility of
assisting at daily Mass. Most laymen do not. And the sick (and some-
times even those in good health, because of some insurmountable
obstacle) are deprived even of Sunday Mass. God will certainly find a
way to send them a crumb of the great common meal. We have the
sacrament of the sick, and a priest can bring them the Body of Christ.

80 “Letting singing and music act in oneself, letting the soul 'open itself to
divine things' (St. Thomas). When music produces this liberating effect, one is
suddenly delivered from the constraint of effort and from distractions, from
irrelevant images, and, as it were, from the distance between time and eternity.
Burning love invades the soul. The conquered heart gives us the sweetness of tears."
Journal de Rdismi, n. 161, p. 304. From the English translation by Antonia White
(to be published) .

87 Cr. the tract, Det Motors divines, quoted farther on, p. 239.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

And even if that is impossible, and if a man lacks the strength to utter
a word, or to join himself in spirit with what the Church is doing, or
even to sigh for God, charity is enough, if it is in his heart.

CONTEMPLATION

Pati divina, to suffer things divine, in an inner experience in which
the soul does not act but is rather acted upon, acted upon by God un-
der the regime of the gifts of the Holy Spirit; pati divine— these are the
words that come to me the instant I try, as poorly qualified as I might
be, to speak of contemplation. This word “ contemplation,” like all
words when one uses them to describe things of a very high order, is
apt to betray those exalted things. There is a natural or philosophical
contemplation 88 which is only of an intellectual and speculative or-
der. Christian contemplation, because it comes from love and tends
to love, and is a work of love, has nothing to do with that. Per
amorem agnoscimns, there “we know through love,” said St. Greg-
ory the Great . 89 It is only out of respect for this mysterious knowl-
edge, given by love, that Christian tradition has preserved the word
“contemplation.”

But with the word “contemplation” vocabulary plays many other
tricks on us, and I would like to say a few words about this right at
the start. Suppose you were trying to find out what poetry is: you
would go immediately to poets; in reading them you would learn, let's
hope, what poetry consists of, or what it is by nature, and you could
then speak of poetry as a thing known or grasped in itself or in its
typical traits. At the same time and by the same token you would be
speaking of the poetry of poets.

After that you will become aware that poetry is not confined to
poets. There is an admirable poetry in the life of a Christopher Co-
lumbus or a Benedict Labre, in the thought of a Plato or an Einstein,
in the movement of the galaxies. Are you going to look there to find
out what poetry is in itself or in its typical trait? That would be im-

88 There is also a “theological contemplation,” in which the theologian, at the
end of his labor of reason, contemplates intellectually, but with the savor of grace,
the truth that he has attained as a summit of the opus theologicum. The infused
contemplation of which I am speaking here is not at all like that either.

86 Moralia , X, 8, 13.

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221

possible, because it is found there in an atypical , hidden or masked
mode. It is the poetry of great discoverers and great saints, of philo-
sophical or scientific geniuses, of the world of the stars. You ought to
recognize the existence of this poetry, which is not that of the poets
(nor of the musicians or other servants of art).

But in fixing your attention and that of others on the poetry of the
poets, as you must do when you describe what poetry is in itself or in
its typical traits , yoil risk making yourself and others believe that
poetry is confined to the poets (or the other servants of art). And the
poetry which does exist elsewhere is thus in danger of being disre-
garded.

Something a bit like that happens with contemplation, but there it
poses much greater problems. We have the contemplation of contem-
platives in the strict sense of the word, of souls wholly dedicated to
contemplation: it is to that type we are referring when we speak (as
I would like to do now) of what contemplation is in itself or in its
typical traits . But we must not forget that there is also the contempla-
tion of those who are not contemplatives in the strict sense of the
word, souls wholly dedicated to contemplation, but who have never-
theless crossed a certain threshold in the life of the spirit that the
contemplatives also cross. We love to contrast Martha and Mary, but
we must not forget that Martha was not some directress of the works
of proselytism in the Temple praying only with her lips, as may be the
case occasionally (that sometimes happens). Martha prayed in her
heart, like Mary; she was concerned with many things, but she de-
voted herself to oraison and contemplated in secret, perhaps pleasing
God as much as Mary, while cooking and busying herself with all
those things of which her sister left her the burden. Was she too per-
haps one of those faithful souls in whom contemplation remains
atypical and masked? In her particular case this seems highly improb-
able. In any case, like all souls that advance toward God (and like all
saints—we venerate her as such) she answered, and answered well, the
call to contemplation addressed to all. I shall come back a little later
to these questions of major importance. I have alluded to them here
parenthetically, as a preliminary to what I will say later. The parenthe-
sis is closed.

I recalled a moment ago the w'ords of St. Gregory the Great: in
contemplation “we know through love." In Christian contemplation

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JACQUES M ARITAIN

intelligence is there supremely alive, in a nocturnal darkness more in-
structive than any concept: blind as to its natural mode of operation,
intelligence knows only by virtue of the connaturality that love cre-
ates between the soul who loves and the God it loves, a God who loves
it first.

“Contemplation, ” said Pere Lallemant, “is a simple, free, penetrat-
ing view of God or of things divine, which proceeds from love and
tends toward love. ... It is the exercise of the purest and most per-
fect charity. Love is its beginning, its exercise and its end.” 90

We could also say, more briefly, that “contemplation is a silent
prayer which takes place in recollection in the secret of the heart, and
is directly ordered to union with God.” 91
According to the common doctrine of the theologians, contempla-
tion is dependent at one and the same time on the theological virtues,
supernatural in their essence, and on the gifts of the Holy Spirit,
“doubly supernatural, not only in their essence like the theological
virtues, but also in their mode of action.” 92 This mode of action ex-
ceeds human measure because “the soul is guided and immediately
moved by divine inspiration.” 93

☆

I have noted before that the Christian is at one and the same time
inseparably person and member.

In the case of the liturgy (and, par excellence , of the Mass) it is
not primarily by what the Christian does , as member of the mystical
Body, in participating at the celebration (in speaking, singing, and
above all in uniting himself wholeheartedly to the work of offering
and of adoration accomplished by the mystical Body and by its
Head) , it is primarily by what he receives, by that which flows back on
him, as person f from that common work, that he is helped in his
progress toward the perfection of charity.

With contemplation, the terms are inverted: it is first of all by

90 La Doctrine spirituelle t ed. Pottier (Paris: T£qui, 1936), pp. 430-432.

91 Rai'ssa, in Liturgy and Contemplation , p. 31.

92 R. P. Garrigou-Lagrange, Perfection chr 6 tienne et Contemplation , Paris,
Descl£e De Brouwer, 5th ed., v. I, p. 34. He treats of the contemplation that the
theologians call “infused” (that which is under discussion here).

»3 Ibid.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

what the Christian does, or rather receives himself as person ''im-
mediately moved by divine inspiration/' that he is helped in his prog-
ress toward the perfection of charity. And by the same token, since
this person is, inseparably, a member of the mystical Body, all the
communicable goods, all the treasures of redeeming grace that over-
flow from his contemplation are made part of the common good of
the mystical Body, and come to enrich the common treasury of the
communion of saints. - -

And the contemplative, by his testimony and his presence among
men, is useful and necessary to their spiritual life in yet another way,
more apparent but less essential, if I may say so, though certainly
needed of itself. "If they lapse, is it not because they no longer re-
member the relish of God and of his Light? To make them know
them, such is the outward function of the contemplative: the uncre-
ated Light, the eternal Wisdom which is Christ; the substantial Sav-
iour which is the Holy Ghost. External works themselves, works of
mercy, owe their excellence to the power they have of revealing the
benevolence of God. There have to be souls solely occupied in drink-
ing at this heavenly spring. Through them, afterwards, the living
WateT of love and its divine taste reach those whose vocation com-
prises more activity. Contemplation is like a water wheel which draws
up the water and makes it flow into channels. If contemplation ceased
entirely, hearts would soon be dried up. . . . Love of one's neigh-
bor, as well as love of God, obliges the contemplative to remain close
to the divine source." 94 All that, which is so true, is like the sign
which makes manifest among us the completely invisible function of
which I have just spoken, and which is essentially, in the mystical
Body, the function ("mystical" itself, in the same sense of the word)
of the contemplative as member of that Body.

Member and person at the same time, the member who partici-
pates in the liturgy receives its fruits as person, because the good of
the whole flows back on the part. At the same time person and mem-
ber, the human person who contemplates God in love gives his fruit
as member by virtue of the integration of the good of the part into
the good of the whole.

We can see that two different and complementary perspectives are
involved here. And by the same token we can see how absurd it is to

M Journal <U Raissa, op. cvt. t p. 67.

22 4

JACQUES MARITAIN

oppose liturgy and contemplation to one another. They demand one
another, and one implies the other. The liturgy, because it is worship
in spirit and in truth, requires, in order that one truly participate in
it, that the participants harbor in their souls the love of God and the
desire to unite themselves to him. It does not require that they all be
contemplatives, which would be to ask the impossible, nor that they
all habitually live the life of love-prayer (so much the better, how-
ever, if they could!). But it demands that there be among them some
who habitually live the life of love-prayer, and it demands that the
others have at least the first seed of this life within them without their
knowing it, thanks to the attention of their heart to the words that
their lips pronounce. And the fruit of the liturgy is to help all those
who participate in it to advance, from as distant a point as it may be
for some, toward the perfection of charity; and to help those who as-
pire to contemplative prayer to advance along that road.

And contemplation develops in the soul of the contemplative the
desire to unite himself to the worship offered by the Church he loves
to the One whom she loves and whom he loves; and it develops first
of all the desire to participate in the celebration of the Mass, in which
the sacrifice of the Lamb is perpetuated among us, and in which his
Body is given to us as food. And contemplation has for its fruit an in-
crease in the common treasury of the goods of the communion of
saints.

We also see that, far from being opposed, the two great declarations
of the Council and of Pope Paul VI complement and confirm one an-
other: the Council's assertion that "the liturgy is the summit toward
which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time, it is the
fount from which all her power flows"; 95 and that of Paul VI, that
"contemplation is the most noble and the most perfect form of hu-
man activity, against which one measures, in the pyramid of human
acts, the proper value of these acts, each according to its kind." 96

And this is so because the first statement is made in the perspec-

95 Cf. p. 216.

96 Discourse of December 7, 1965, delivered by the Pope at the closing of the
Council. . . Adeo ut homo, cum mentem et cor suum in Deo defigere nititur,
contemplationi vacando , actum animi sui eliciat qui omnium nobilissimus ac
perfectissimus est habendus ; actum dicimus a quo nostris etiam temporibus
mnumeri humanae navitatis campi suae dignitatis gradum sumere possunt ac
debent” A.A.S. of January 31, 1966, p. 53.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

22 S

tive of the common work accomplished by the Church, which ulti-
mately flows back on the individual person, and the second is made in
the perspective of the highest act of which the individual person is
capable, and which ultimately flows back on the Church.

The fact remains that in the equal pre-eminence of the common
work accomplished by the Body and its Head, and of the act by which
the contemplative becomes one with his God, the liturgy retains an
inalienable privilege: in the Mass heaven comes down to earth; Jesus,
at the words of the priest, is suddenly there, under veils, to perpetu-
ate mysteriously his unique Sacrifice, and his presence among us in
the Holy Sacrament. But contemplation also retains an inalienable
privilege: in contemplation a man who is a self , a universe to him-
self, is united to Jesus in a union of person to Person, a union of love,
and he joins in the night of faith the End for which he himself and all
the universe were created. In contemplation heaven begins on earth
(for contemplation will continue in heaven, whereas the Mass will
not). The mystical Body is composed of human persons each of
whom was made for this purpose of seeing God in eternity, and being
united with him through love on earth, and for each of whom Christ
gave his life in his supreme act of love. He gave it for the entire
Church and for all the People of God, but that was possible only by
giving it for each one as if he were alone in the world. And it is the
duty of each, to the extent that he knows what God did for him, to
answer such love by a total gift of himself in love.

“The love of God is always from Person to person, and our love for
God is always from our heart to His heart, which has loved us first, in
our very singularity/' 97 “As a member of a Body whose common
good is identical with the ultimate good itself of each person/' each
is helped by this Body to love God, but “each one is alone before
God to love him, to contemplate him here below and to see him in
heaven, as also to be judged by Him— each one according to his
love." 88

*

From that one understands a bit better the importance of the
Psalmist's injunction: “Be still and know that I am God" (Ps. 46.

97 Liturgy and Contemplation, pp. 83-8^.

98 Ibid., p. 83.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

[45]). “Taste and see how much the Lord is good!” ( Ps . 34 [33]).
And one understands a bit better why the saints have never tired of
asserting that wordless prayer (which of itself tends to contempla-
tion) is a normally necessary way of approach for anyone who has a
firm resolve to advance toward the perfection of charity. That is what
the Constitution on the Liturgy reminds us: “The Christian is indeed
called to prav with his brethren, but he must also enter into his cham-
ber to pray to the Father in secret; yet more, according to the teach-
ing of the apostle, he should pray without ceasing.” 99 This was the
teaching of St. Irenaeus in the second century, St. Ambrose and St.
Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries, Cassian in the fifth, and
then St. Gregory the Great, St. John Climaque, St. Bernard, St
Hildegarde, St. Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas
(he tells us that contemplation “aims directly and immediately at the
love of God himself” and that it “is not directed to whatever a kind
of love of God, but to perfect love”), 100 St. Gertrude, St. Catherine
of Sienna, and later, in an age when a strong ’impulse toward self-re-
flection had its drawbacks but of itself, like every prise de conscience,
marked an undeniable progress, St. Teresa of Avila (“there is only one
road that leads to God, and that is orchson”) and St. John of the
Cross (the same saint who said “in the evening of this life you will
be judged on love,” said also: “contemplative prayer must take prece-
dence over all other occupations, it is the strength of the soul”); and
after them, the great Jesuit spirituals, Lallemant, Surin, Grou, Caus-
sade, and then St. Therese of Lisieux.

Pere Lallemant wrote: “Without contemplation we will never ad-
vance far toward virtue ... we will never break free of our weak-
nesses and our imperfections. We will always be attached to the
earth, and will never raise ourselves much above the sentiments of na-
ture. We will never be able to offer a perfect service to God. But with
contemplation we will do more in a month, for ourselves and for
others, than we would have been able to do without it in ten years. It
produces . . . acts of sublime love of God such as one can hardly
ever accomplish without this gift . . . , and finally, it perfects faith
and all the virtues. . . .” 101

99 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Par. 12.

100 Sum. theol. , II— II, 182, 2; 182, 2, ad 1.

101 La Doctrine Spirituelle , pp. 429-430.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE 227

This whole long tradition remained faithful to the teaching of St.
Paul, for whom, as Father Lebreton wrote, charity, which “when we
die will flower into eternal life/' is “the means and the end of contem-
plation/’ 102

And there is one greater than St. Paul. Christ himself, as St. Bona-
venture repeats again and again, promises to those who love him this
experience of things divine when he says, in St. John: “He who loves
me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest my-
self to him” ( John 14:21). And it is he who tells us: “When you
pray, go into your room, and shut the door, and pray to your Father
in secret; and your Father who sees in the secret will reward you”
(Matt. 6:6). Clauso ostio! It is the door of the room and it is the
door of the soul. And it is also He who is the Door ( John 10:9), and
who encloses us in him when we are recollected in oraison.

And it is Christ who said: “You must pray constantly” (Luke 18:1).
Sine intermissione orate “pray ceaselessly” (1 Thess. 5:17), St. Paul
will say, following his master. The Church applies this precept in her
liturgy. But it is addressed to all; and this is not impossible.

How can one manage to pray constantly? By repeating a short for-
mula so unremittingly that it becomes rooted in the soul? This is the
means that Christians of the Eastern Churches have employed for
centuries with the “Jesus prayer” (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have pity on me a sinner) repeated incessantly. Such a method— in
which, in the last analysis, a sort of psychological technique utilizes a
practice (“ejaculatory prayer”) that is holy in itself (when it springs
from the heart)— might in the course of time result in a habit no
doubt rooted in the soul, but one in which a verbal formula made in-
cessantly present by a natural automatism plays much more of a part
than does that vital (and supematurally vital) act that is prayer.

The true answer is to be sought in this vital act itself. With a St.
Theresa when she was busy with her foundations or a St. Vincent de
Paul when be was busy with his poor, it went on virtually , always
ready to spring up, by very reason of the profundity and intensity
with which it filled their souls in the hours of meditation reserved for
wordless prayer.

And this true answer is, no doubt, given us iu the most decisive

102 Dtct. (k Sperititalitd, col. 1715 and 1711.

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JACQUES MARITAIN

fashion by what Father Osende, in a remarkable page of his book
Contemplata , 103 calls Voraison du coeur , "the prayer of the heart/' It
is, I think, through this sort of prayer or contemplation, so silent and
so rooted in the depths of the spirit that he describes it as "uncon-
scious," that we can best and most truly put into practice the precept
to pray constantly . 104 And was it not to it that St. Anthony the Her-
mit alluded when he said that "there is no perfect prayer if the re-
ligious is himself aware that he is praying?" 105

The prayer that Father Osende calls the prayer of the heart and that
he describes as unconscious (it pertains to that "supra-conscious of
the spirit” of which I have said a great deal elsewhere) can and must,
he says, be continuous in the contemplative soul. "For we cannot
fix our mind on two objects at the same time nor continue to think
always, whereas we can love always” (at least in the supra-conscious
of the spirit— only there, in effect, can love be in act continuously).
We are then no longer dealing simply with the vital impulse of prayer
always present virtually in consciousness; the prayer of the heart itself
remains in act— in the supra-conscious of the spirit. It is an unformu-
lated act of love that can be constantly present, like that of a mother
—an example dear to Bergson— who while she sleeps, still watches
over the infant in the cradle. "Who does not see that this is possible,
and very possible? Do we not see that, even in the natural order,
when the heart is dominated by a great love, no matter what the per-
son does, his entire soul and life are on what he loves and not on

103 Translated into English under the title Fruits of Contemplation (St. Louis,
Mo.: Herder, 1953). I would like to point out here that the pages in Liturgy and
Contemplation that deal with the prayer of the heart and with Father Osende
stand in need of correction. In writing these pages I inadvertently spoke (probably
because of the “unconscious” character of this prayer) of “atypical” or “masked”
contemplation, which we will discuss later. This was a serious error. The prayer of
the heart springs from the supra-conscious of the spirit, but it is not at all
“masked” contemplation; it is a typical form of contemplation, and one of the
most precious.

104 The idea of perpetual or uninterrupted prayer which is carried on even in
sleep by a mental activity inaccessible to the consciousness, plays a central role with
Cassian. (Cf. Diet, de Spirituality , art. Contemplation, col. 1924 and 1926.)
P£re Grou in the eighteenth century also notes ( Manuel , p. 224 ff.) that uninter-
rupted prayer is a prayer that escapes the consciousness. Cf. Arintero, The Mystical
Evolution in the Development and Vitality of the Church (St. Louis, Mo.: Herder,

1950, P-45-

105 “]s Jon est perfecta oratio in qua se monachus vel hoc ipsum quod orat
inteUigit. ,f Cassian, IX, 31.

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229

what he does, though he may apply to his work all his attention? If
natural love does this, how much more should divine love. . . 106

He who has reached the stage of the prayer of the heart, therefore,
fulfills in the best way possible the precept to pray constantly .

THE DIVERSITY OF THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

- <"

It is with contemplation considered in itself and in its typical traits,
in other words, with those who are wholly dedicated to contempla-
tion, that the previous considerations dealt. Here we must note that
serious errors are possible if we misread the doctrine of the saints, I
mean if we understand it in the manner of a “univocal” assertion, a
mathematical proposition or an article of law, without taking into ac-
count the freedom, the breadth and the variety of the ways of God.

The word “contemplation” makes many people afraid, and I have
noted earlier that, like every human word that designates exalted
things, it is not without risk of deceiving honest readers. In addition,
the very sublimity of those who teach us about it is enough to
frighten one. To advance as one must toward God, is it prescribed to
me, a businessman or a factory worker, or a doctor overwhelmed by
his practice, or a family father bent under his burden— to talk with
God like St. Gertrude or St. Catherine of Sienna, and to aspire to the
transforming union and the spiritual marriage like St. Teresa and St.
John of the Cross? Not really; that is not what is involved.

Contemplation is a winged and supernatural thing, free with the
freedom of the Spirit of God, more burning than the African sun and
more refreshing than the waters of a rushing stream, lighter than
birds' down, unseizable, escaping any human measure and discon-
certing every human notion, happy to depose the mighty and exalt
the lowly, capable of all disguises, of all daring and all timidity, chaste,
fearless, luminous and nocturnal, sweeter than honey and more bar-
ren than rock, crucifying and beatifying (crucifying above all), and
sometimes all the more exalted the less conspicuous it is.

When the theologians, after having shown us the sublimity of the
goal and having a little frightened us with it, speak to us of the call of
all to contemplation, they soften their language, but not less energet-

1W V. OscxkJc, FmHs of Coitiempl&tion, pp. 1 57-1 59.

230 JACQUES MARITAIN

ically. They explain that this call (it is a call, not a precept, because
; contemplation, with respect to the only End, which is the perfection
of love— and in the same way, participation in the liturgy— are only
means, as normally necessary as they are), they explain to us that
this call is similar to another call (this one a precept)— the call to the
perfection of love. It is, at first, a “distant” call which some day per-
haps will become “immediate.” 107 And it is the distant call that is
addressed to all; and in order not to be in fault at this point it is
enough only to set out, even without knowing it . 108

But what is still more important, it seems to me, what it is, first of
all, important to observe, is that the response to the immediate call,
or, in other words, the entry into the path of contemplation, coin-
cides with something of a much more profound and much more hid-
den order, which may be called the entry into the life of the spirit: I
mean that it takes place at the end of a transitional phase during
which— in a manner inaccessible to consciousness (in the depths of
the supra-conscious of the spirit)— the soul has been gradually intro-
duced to a new regime of life; then, once arrived at this new stage of
its spiritual progress, the soul no longer receives only from time to
time, in order to extricate itself from some exceptional difficulty or

107 St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas each, in conformity with the tradition of
the saints, that all souls are called in a distant way to contemplation, considered
as the normal flowering of the grace of the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

. The immediate call “exists only when the presence of the three signs mentioned by
St. John of the Cross, and before him by Tauler, is ascertained: first, meditation
becomes unfeasible; second, the soul has no desire to fix the imagination on any
particular object, interior or exterior; third, the soul is pleased to find itself alone
with God, fixing its affectionate attention on him/' R. P. Garrigou-Lagrange,
Perfection chrdtienne et Contemplation , II, pp. 421-422.

108 “One does not sin against the precept/' writes St. Thomas with respect to
the precept concerning the perfection of charity, “simply because one does not
accomplish it in the best manner; it suffices, in order that the precept not be
transgressed, that it be accomplished in one way or another" (Sum. theol. y II— II,
184, 3, ad 2). And Cajetan comments: “The perfection of charity is commanded
as an end, one must will to attain the end, the whole end; but precisely because
it is an end, to obey the precept it is enough to be in a state of someday reaching
this perfection, even if only in heaven. Whoever possesses charity, even to the
most tenuous degree, and advances thus toward heaven, is on the way to perfect
charity, and thereby avoids transgression of the precept."

Similarly, we are not deaf to the call of contemplation if we do not answer it
in the best manner. Whoever has within him, even to the feeblest degree, the will
to pray to God, whether by mumbling paternosters or by crying out to God, is
without knowing it on the way to contemplation.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 3 x

| some temptation, the help of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (which are
necessary to salvation, as I recalled above). When the soul has arrived
at this new stage, when it has crossed this threshold, it begins to be
habitually aided by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that is what the
theologians call entering under the habitual regime of these gifts.

Now the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the enumeration of which Catholic
theology takes from Isaiah , 109 have different objects. Certain, like the

I gifts of Counsel, Fortitude, FSar of the Lord, and Piety, are related
above all to action; the others, like the gifts of Wisdom, Understand-
ing and Knowledge, are related above all to contemplation.

From this it follows that there are very diverse ways and extremely
different styles in which souls who have set out on the path of the
spirit can advance along it. In some it is the highest gifts, the gifts
of Wisdom, Understanding and Knowledge, which are at work in an
eminent way— these souls represent the mysterious life of the spirit in
its normal plentitude; and they will have the grace of contemplation
in its typical forms, whether arid or consoling. In the others, it is the
other gifts which are at work above all— they will live the life of the
spirit but above all with respect to their activities and their works, and
they will not have the typical and normal forms of contemplation.

“It is not, however, that they are deprived of contemplation, of the
loving experience of things divine; for according to the teaching of St.
Thomas, all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are linked to one another ; 110

1 they cannot, therefore, exist in the soul without the gift of Wisdom,
which, in the case we are discussing, is at work, though in a less ap-
parent way. These souls whose style of life is an active one will have
the grace of contemplation, but of a masked , not apparent contempla-
tion. Perhaps they will only be able to recite rosaries, and wordless
oraison will give them a headache or make them sleepy. Mysterious
contemplation will not be in their conscious prayer, but perhaps in
the glance with which they will look at a poor man, or will look at
suffering.” 111

We can understand nothing about the things we are discussing at
this moment if we do not carefully take into account these atypical,

lt§ I*., 1 1 : 2. Cf. Sum. thcol., I~fl, 68, 4 to 8.
theol. , I-II, 68,

111 Action and Conte mpiat ion, in Questions de conscience (Paris, Descl6e Dc
Brouwer, 1938), p. 146.

232 JACQUES MARITAIN

diffused or disguised forms of contemplation. If I put this much em-
phasis on them, it is because I am a bit hopeful, after all these ex-
planations, that a reader, even one trained by the clergy of today, will
be less scandalized by the idea that contemplation (open or masked)
lies in the normal path of Christian perfection. But I also think that,
all things considered (it is only a question of vocabulary, and in order
to spare the “modern mentality” misunderstandings for which it has,
moreover, a singular avidity), it would perhaps be better— instead of
saying “the call of all the baptized to contemplation”— -to say, what is
the same thing, “the call of all the baptized to the loving experience
of the things of God.”

Be that as it may, if the call is addressed to all, we must recognize
also that in fact, given our dear nature, so dear to our Christians re-
newed by Evolution, and given the general conditions of human life,
those among the baptized who answer the call in question, but badly,
like idlers and laggards, and who soon sit down at the edge of the
road, will always be the most numerous. It is a pity, but it is true. And
this fact shows how important a part, for the life of the kingdom of
God in pilgrimage here below, is played by these (not so rare, how-
ever, as one might think) who have crossed the threshold of which I
spoke above, and who make up for the great deficiency as to the com-
mon good of the Church— and the cruel privation each of the laggards
inflicts on himself— which the mysterious patience of Jesus tolerates
in the greater part of his flock.

CONTEMPLATION ON THE ROADS

I shall still be speaking here, and at some length, of things that re-
fer to the inner life and the search for the perfection of charity. Is
this to forget that The Peasant of the Garonne is written by “an old
layman who questions himself about the present time”? Certainly
not— I am not forgetting my subtitle; and my reflections always con-
cern— and more so than ever— our times. For if our age scarcely thinks
of these things (has there ever been an age in history that has thought
a great deal about them?), there is still— precisely because it feeds on
a heap of flattering illusions— nothing of which it stands in greater
need than attention to these things by a certain number of human

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 33

beings: a relatively small number, no doubt, but which certainly
could, and should be much larger. To tell the truth, it is in having this
small number in mind that this whole book was written, I mean in
order to offer known or unknown friends an opportunity to heave for
a moment a sigh of relief (it is always a pleasure to hear some im-
prudent talker stammer out truths which are not welcome) .

As far as this last section is concerned, the fact is that it is hardly
mine. It is more Ra’issa^ than Thine. My task was above all to weave
together in an order that seemed appropriate to my sketch many
texts written by her and that stand on their own, because a breath
passes in them of an experience of that deep Christian life whose mys-
tery they enlighten for us a little.

☆

La contemplation sur les chemins — contemplation on the roads —
that is the title of a book that RaTssa wanted to write (our friends had
encouraged her to do so), and which in her mind was addressed to
those— much less rare than one thinks— who, while living what we
call the ordinary life of the good Christian in the world (family duties
and vocational duties, Mass on Sundays, cooperation in some apos-
tolic work, the desire to help one's neighbor as much as possible, and
a few moments of vocal prayer at home), are ready to go further, and
whose hearts are burning to go further, but who find themselves
prevented by many fears and obstacles, more or less illusory — or some-
times dissuaded by the very persons who have the charge of guiding
them.

I have a notion that the widespread infatuation that today pre-
vails for action, technique, organization, inquiries, committees, mass
movements, and the new possibilities that sociology and psychology
are discovering— all things that are far from being contemptible,
but which, if one confided only in them, would lead to a strange
naturalism in the service (so one hopes) of the supernatural- will
some day give rise to a great deal of strong disappointments.

In order to make the teachings of the Council pass into their lives,
were not Christian people going to try first of all to be attentive to
the wishes of that Spirit, without whose assistance “there is nothing
innocent in man"? Such a wish would be a little too much oblivious

*34 JACQUES MARITAIN

of the historical conditioning to which the world is subject. In any
case, the fact remains that at this moment many souls are dying of
thirst, and receive hardly any help except from the few hidden but
nevertheless radiant centers that, in consecrated or lay persons, con-
templation has reserved for itself on this poor earth, and through
which the Spirit of God comes to touch them. As I have previously
noted, the titanism of human effort is the great idol of our times. And
consequently it is clear that an invisible galaxy of souls dedicated to
the contemplative life— in the world itself, I mean, in the very heart
of the world— is our ultimate reason for hoping.

Unlike souls dedicated to action, who, if they advance in the ways
of God as is demanded of them, partake in the “masked” contempla-
tion I discussed earlier, the souls I am now referring to partake in
“open” contemplation. But their path is a very humble one; it de-
mands nothing but charity and humility, and contemplative prayer
without apparent graces. This is the path of simple people, it is the
“little way” (La petite voie) that St. Therese of Lisieux was in charge
of teaching us: a kind of short-cut— singularly abrupt, to tell the
truth— where all the great things described by St. John of the Cross
can be found divinely simplified and reduced to the pure essentials,
but without losing any of their exigence.

The soul is laid bare, and its very love-prayer as well— so arid at
times that it seems to fly into distractions and emptiness. It is a path
that demands great courage. Complete surrender to Him whom we
love accepts every burden, will make the soul pass through all the
stages willed by Jesus (and known only to Him), and will lead there
where Jesus wills, in light or in darkness. Only in His heart do such
beings wish to have their shelter; and by the same token they also
wish their own hearts to be a shelter for the neighbor.

☆

Rai'ssa said a few words on the subject she wanted to treat, in a
short chapter in Liturgy and Contemplation , several passages of which
I will reproduce here.

“Indeed contemplation is not given only to the Carthusians, the
Poor Clares, the Carmelites. ... It is frequently the treasure of

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 35

persons hidden to the world-known only to some few — to their di-
rectors, to a few friends. Sometimes, in a certain manner, this treas-
ure is hidden from the souls themselves that possess it— souls who
live by it in all simplicity, without visions, without miracles, but with
such a flame of love for God and neighbor that good spreads all
around them without noise and without agitation.

"It is of this that our age has to become aware, and of the ways
through which contqmplation communicates itself through the world,
under one form or the other, to the great multitude of souls who
thirst for it (often without knowing it) and who are called to it at
least in a remote manner. The great need of our age, in what con-
cerns the spiritual life, is to put contemplation on the roads.

"It is fitting to note here the importance of the witness and mission
of Saint Therese of Lisieux. ... It is a great way indeed— and a
heroic one— this petite voie of Therese’s, which hides rigorously its
greatness under an absolute simplicity, itself heroic. And this absolute
simplicity makes of it a way par excellence open to all those who as-
pire to perfection, whatever their condition of life may be. This is
the feature here that it is particularly important for us to keep in
mind.

"Saint Therese of Lisieux has shown that the soul can tend to the
perfection of charity by a way in which the great signs that Saint
John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila have described do not
appear. ... By the same token, I believe, Saint Therese in her Car-
mel prepared in an eminent way that diffusion wider than ever, of
the life of union with God which the world requires if it is not to
perish.

"Let us add that in this contemplation on the roads whose develop-
ment the future will doubtless see, it seems that constant attention to
the presence of Jesus and fraternal charity are called to play a major
role, as regards even the way of infused contemplative prayer.” 112

A constant attention to the presence of Jesus; and fraternal char-
ity: it matters especially that we turn our attention to these two main
characteristics of contemplation on the roads. On the subject of the
first, a note from the Journal de Ra'issa gives us more detailed infor-
mation.

112 Liturgy and Contemplation , pp. 74-76.

23 6 JACQUES MARITAIN

“Certain spiritual writers think that the highest contemplation,
being free of all the images of this world, is that which does without
images altogether, even that of Jesus, and into which, consequently,
the Humanity of Christ does not enter.

“That is a profound error, and the problem disappears as soon as
one has grasped how truly and how deeply the Word has assumed hu-
man nature, in such a way that everything which is of this nature,
suffering, pity, compassion, hope . . . , all these things have be-
come, so to speak, attributes of God. In contemplating them, it is
therefore attributes of God which are contemplated. Since apart and
below the divine perfections the Word Incarnate possesses human
qualities which are God's — they are the objects of a contemplation
that is just as spiritual, although it includes images.

“And the soul must not be afraid of passing through the human
states and the human pity of Jesus, and of making requests of Him
and of praying for the cure of a sick person, for example— all these
things being participations in the desires and the compassion of
Christ, which belonged to the divine Person itself.” 113

I find in some lines of Pere Marie-Joseph Nicolas a remarkable con-
firmation of these views. In Jesus, writes Pere Nicolas, “man finds God
himself.” The humanity assumed by the Word has no separate con-
sistency and existence which would make of it a creature between the
world and God. To lore the Man Jesus , to unite oneself to the Man
Jesus , is to lore God." 114

What shall I say on the second characteristic of contemplation on
the roads pointed out by Ra’fssa? If fraternal charity is called to play a
major role in this contemplation, it seems to me that it is to the ex-
tent that love-prayer can and must be pursued in those very relations
with men in which those who live in the world are constantly in-
volved. Then, in looking at our brothers and listening to them, in
being attentive to their problems and having compassion for their
afflictions, we will not only strive to love them as Jesus loves them;
at the same time a more secret grace will be given to us. If we give
them all the attention we can from our own hearts, that is not much,
to tell the truth; but what counts much more, for us and for our

Journal de Ra’issa , op. cit ., pp. 361-362.

114 Revue Thomiste, 1947-I, pp. 41-42.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 37

i

I

I

1

I

i

*

brothers, is the fact that at the same time Jesus' love for them, which
gives them His very heart, is drawing to Him the gaze of our soul and
the depths of our heart. P£re Voillaume told me once that that was
truly seeing Jesus in them ; and M&re Madeleine, of Cr6pieux— in a
more developed formula, to which I would like to stick— that it came
to penetrate , in looking at our brothers and loving them , a little of the
very mystery of Jesus himself and His love for each of us. “For," she
added, “since there is only, one -commandment, the constant love of
our brothers, love to the point of wearing oneself out for them, is the
fulfillment in act of the love of God and union with Jesus; and it is
love that makes contemplation grow, deepen itself, exult."

To see Jesus in our brothers is an abridged formula, and one which
could be misunderstood. Did not, however, Jesus make himself one
with them, did he not make all their sorrows his own? “I was hungry
and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a
stranger, and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I
was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and yon came to me"
(Matt. 25:35). That is true, but the fact remains that our brothers
are mere creatures, confronting our eyes, and not (to us who have not
had the chance to see Him with our eyes) God before the gaze of our
soul, as is Jesus when we contemplate him in his very humanity. It is
not exactly in them , it is rather through them and behind them that
we see Jesus and his love for them. And by the same token, it is in
arrear of our attention to others, and of our exchanges with them, in
arrear of the noise they make and we make, it is in an inner silence
in which the spiritual preconscious much more than the conscious is
absorbed, that our soul is attracted to Jesus who is there, and to his
love for our brothers, who are his brothers. And this inner silence in
us— which the man who speaks to us perceives also in a manner much
more unconscious than conscious— is no doubt the best part of what
he receives from our so much disarmed fraternal charity.

To contemplate, alone with Him alone, God in the humanity of
Jesus; and to contemplate Jesus through our neighbor, whom he
loves and whom we love— these are the two most highly desirable
paths of contemplation for a man engaged in the labors of the world.
But neither is easy for him.

In the first kind of contemplating, which in itself is always required

238 JACQUES M ARITAIN

(it is commanded by the Lord), one is constantly exposed to diffi-
culties created by lack of time; notwithstanding, we must do every-
thing possible to persevere in this path.

That is not the problem one has to complain about with the
second path; the time available for it would be rather too largely of-
fered. And this path also permits a very pure oraison , from which all
danger of formulas, notions, routines, even the danger of falling
asleep, have been swept away. It is in the poor human clay that we
learn then to know Jesus and many of his secrets. But it is an arid
love-prayer, almost too pure for our feeble heart, because, being much
more unconscious than conscious, it comes about in the tiredness of
our members and of our conscious faculties, rather than in the repose
where we can taste “how sweet the Lord is.”

To rediscover this repose we must return to prayer clauso ostio ,
where we are alone with Jesus.

☆

The lack of time to which I just alluded is the practical problem
that makes many laymen attracted to contemplative prayer hesitate,
and from which suffer most all those who dedicate themselves to
prayer in the world. Without speaking of the “second path” of which
I just spoke, there are many particular answers, infinitely variable
according to the case of each one. (One can faire oraison in the train,
in the subway, in the dentist's waiting room. One can also have
frequent recourse to those short prayers flung out like a cry, which
the ancients recommended so highly.) 115 There is no definitive an-
swer except that which Dom Florent Mi£ge once gave: You must
love your chains. The material obstacles encountered at each mo-
ment by one who lives the life of prayer in the world are an integral

115 Cf. Mrs. Etta Gullik’s excellent article, “Les courtes prices,” in La Vie
Spirituelle , February 1966 (original English in The Clergy Review). The author
recalls that St. Francis of Assisi passed an entire night repeating “My God and my
All.” “Jesus asked us to pray without ceasing. But how can this be done in the
bustle of the modem world, when so many people complain that they lack the
time to pray regularly every day? Do ejaculations not offer a solution? They are as
valid for the Christian who is educated as for one who is not. . . . The desert
Fathers made use of this kind of prayer at every moment . . . Cassian recom-
mended the recitation of the first words of Psalm 70(69) : 'Oh God, come quickly
to my aid, Lord, make haste to help me/ ”

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 39

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r.

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1

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part of this life, and make up the unavoidably sorrowful side of it. "I
have the feeling that what is asked of us is to live in the storm of life,
without keeping back any of our substance, without keeping back
anything for ourselves, neither rest nor friendships nor health nor
leisure— to pray incessantly and that even without leisure— in fact to
let ourselves pitch and toss in the waves of the divine will till the day
when it will say: ‘It is enough/ ” 11S

The fact remains that the Lcrrd told us to pray in the secrecy of our
chamber, and that we should be bent on doing so as often as possible.
In the present state of our civilization women are reduced to slavery
by the absence of human help in domestic life; a mother of a family
has to do everything by herself in her house, and the more mechanical
gadgets she has at her disposal the more she is a slave. Men, too (a
little less enslaved), are enchained to their work and most often worn
out by the worries of daily breadwinning. In spite of everything, I do
not think that it is impossible, since one still finds quite a bit of
time for chit-chat or television, to give every day a little time, how -
ever little it might be, to praying in private, door closed.

That is the only more or less fixed rule, it seems to me, in a state of
life that does not admit of fixed rules. And when one has absolutely no
time for contemplative prayer, there always remains the desire of the
heart, and that benignity of divine manners of which we spoke
earlier: “If it happens that someone cannot weep, a single word from
a contrite heart is enough for God. And if someone would lose the
use of his tongue, God would be well pleased with the moaning of
his heart/’ 117

*

On the roads of the world we do not encounter only the afflictions
of the world, we know also its beauty; we see it “shining from its
numberless stars/' At every moment we have to deal with the foolish
ways of oux nature and of our natural love for creatures; at every
moment we also have to deal with the grandeur and dignity of our
nature, as well as with the sweetness and nobility of our natural love
for creatures.

110 Journal de Rdfs§a y op. cat., p. 212.

D« Mocurt divines, tract attributed tn St. Tboitoas Aquinas (trans. by
Ralssa Maritain, Paris, Libr. de l’Art Catholique, 1921).

240

JACQUES MARITAIN

One is not more subject to temptation in the world than in the
desert. One is there, however, less well-armed against temptation than
in the desert or the cloister. This is the misfortune of life in the
world. But in compensation, one is in a better position not to
slander nature , 118 that nature which God had made, to recognize still
its grandeur and its dignity even in the midst of temptation , 119 to
understand that it is never evil as such that tempts us, it is always
some “ontological” good — often even morally innocent and some-
times noble in itself— but one that God's law and his love command
us to refuse, because to attain it by such given means or under such
given circumstances we would have to violate the order of things.

Moreover, it is of course true that grace perfects nature and does
not destroy it, but this means in effect that grace perfects nature by
going beyond it, and transforms it (according to the law of all trans-
formation) by making it give up that which, in its own order, and
not without reason, it holds most dear.

Let us go

For the sake of God , beauty itself must be forsaken

He holds in His hand the starry universe . 120

“Sacrifice is an absolutely universal law for the perfecting of the
creature. Everything which passes from a lower nature to a higher
nature has to pass through self-sacrifice, mortification and death.

118 I should have put this sentence in the past tense. Who slanders nature
today? Certainly not study gatherings held by members of religious orders. Every-
one venerates it; but they do so foolishly, I mean insofar only as nature is mirrored
in man's science and the uses he puts it to. Nature is more chaste and more
mysterious than we think. When it comes to looking at it and respecting it truly,
there are only the poet, the contemplative, and painters like the Chinese, or
Breughel or Jean Hugo. If we venerate it so stupidly today, it is undoubtedly because
our ancestors slandered it stupidly over too long a period of time, in misreading
great ascetic writers. The fact remains that, when a conceited naturalism spreads
in consecrated circles, it is there that it shows itself the funniest and the most
foolish.

119 “Nature laments, she pleads her cause with prodigious eloquence, with a
terrible power of seduction. She is not rebellious, she is not perverse. She is herself.
And being able to desire only life, she has to consent to death. . . Journal de
Raissa , op. cit. r p. 51.

120 Raissa, Douceur du monde (in Lettre de Nuit). From the translation of
Raissa's thirty Poems by a Benedictine of Stanbrook, Worcester, Stanbrook Abbey
Press, 1965.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

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The mineral assimilated by the plant becomes living matter. The
vegetable which is consumed is transformed in the animal into
sensible living matter. The man who yields up his whole soul to God
through the obedience of faith, finds it again in glory. The angel
who has renounced the natural light of his intelligence to plunge
himself in the darkness of faith, has found the splendor of divine
light. . . ” 121

A soul given to lo\ae-prayer i*n the world, and within its beauty, is
thus in a better position to acquire some understanding— at great
price— of the very mystery of temptation (which can stir up in us a
great deal of human filth, but does not in itself involve any sin, as
long as we do not yield to it). I mean that the contemplative in the
world is in a better position to have a presentiment that what temp-
tation aims at operating in us is not so much a destruction as a trans-
figuration, less an annihilation of something in us than a transference
—through death— to a higher life, where it becomes worthy to be
offered to God and to unite with him.

i When I have vanquished you , O my life , O my death,

► When I am free of the hard pull of joy

i And have gained my heavenly liberty,

| When I have chosen the hardest way,

L My heart will rest in the balance of grace,

* But I shall retain you, love,

Retain from you not death, but life,

And I shall discover you , happiness,

Having given my Lord the whole of myself.

Like a prosperous ship, her cargo intact,

Which safe into harbour comes again ,

I shall sail to heaven with transfigured heart,

Bearing human gifts made free from stain. 12 *

I would like to quote here some passages from the Journal de
Ra'issa which express what I would like to say better than I could do:
“In the heart of the strong man temptation caa acquire a degree of
acuteness all the greater because God, who assists at the conflict in

181 Journal de Rditrn, op. cit., p. 55.

182 “Transfiguration,” in R. M., Lettre de Nuit, op. cit., p. 80-81.

2 4 2

JACQUES M ARITAIN

the soul of the just (or of whoever desires to become so), knows
that he will triumph in it by His grace. The human heart is then
probed in all its depth. . . . The richness, the complexity of nature
is somewhat dazzling. And yet the man tempted to this point, who
resists, strong in faith, marvels at a still greater wonder. He soars above
all this magnificent and shattered nature by the impetus of his
spirit / 7 125

“God wants us to offer him, from every thing and every affection,
whatever there is in them of being and of beauty.

“He does not want dead offerings. He wants offerings that are pure
and full of life. But, of course, where purification has taken place,
something has had to die. And what remains is transformed, trans-
figured. Affection has entered into the order of charity.

“What must be removed from human love— to render it pure,
beneficent, universal and divine— is not love itself. No, what must be
suppressed or rather surpassed, are the limits of the heart. Hence the
suffering— in this effort to go beyond our narrow limits. For in these
limits, in our limits, is our human joy.

“But we have to go beyond these limits of the heart; we have,
under the action of grace and through the travail of the soul, to leave
our bounded heart for the boundless heart of God. This is truly dying
to ourselves. It is only when one has accepted this death that one
enters, resurrected, into the boundless heart of God, with all that one
loves, all the spoils of love, giving oneself up as prey to the infinite
love.

“Death to ourselves makes free room for the love of God. But at
the same time it makes free room for the love of creatures according
to the order of divine charity.

“Tread one's heart oneself in the winepress. Lay one's heart on the
Cross." 124

“All love must be transformed into Love as grapes are transformed
into wine — under the press." 125

God does not want dead offerings . We must bring him offerings
human and without stain. We must go beyond the limits of the heart .

123 Journal de Ra’issa, op. cit., p. 6i.

124 Ibid., p. 22i.

126 Ibid., p. 220.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 43

We must transform all love into Love. All that, the one who prays
in the world is, I believe, in a better position to understand a little
than the one who prays cut off from the world.

☆

“The Church is all mingled with sin"; we were told that earlier. 126
In another way that is true also for those who devote themselves to
love-prayer on the roads of this world, no doubt truer for them than
for the cloistered. And it is a privilege for their life of prayer. For sin
is indeed a great mystery, and it is fitting that those who pray draw a
little closer to this mystery “In the very sin of the creature subsists a
mystery which is sacred to us; this wound, at least, belongs to him; it
is a pitiable good for which he pawns his eternal life, and in whose
folds are hidden the justice and compassion of God. To heal this
wound Christ willed to die. In order to see as deeply as he does into
the sinful soul, one would have to love it with as much tenderness
and purity." 127

When we meet a sinner we should be seized with great respect, as
in the presence of one condemned to death— who can live again, and
have in paradise, close to Jesus, a higher place than we.

As I write these lines I have before me the memento of Jacques
Fesch, “born on Passion Sunday, April 6, 1930, condemned to death
April 6, 1957, on the eve of Passion Sunday, executed at dawn, Oc-
tober 1, 1957/' He had come back to God in his prison. In his last
letters we find the following: “The nails in my hands are real, and the
nails accepted. I understand better all the purity of Christ contrasted
with my abjection. Since I accept wholeheartedly the will of the
Father, I am receiving joy after joy" (August 16). “The execution will
take place tomorrow morning, about four o'clock in the morning;
may the will of God be done in all things . . . Jesus is very near to
me. He draws me closer and closer to him, and I can only adore him
in silence, wishing to die of love. ... I await love! In five hours I
will see Jesus! He draws me gently to him, giving me that peace which
is not of this world. ..." A little later he observes: “Peace has left
me and given place to anguish, my heart is bursting in my breast.

126 Charles Journet, Theologie de VEglise. Cf. p 186.

127 Frontieres de la Poesie, “Dialogues,” p. 115.

244 JACQUES MARITAIN

Holy Virgin, have pity on me! . . ." And then: “I am calmer now
than a moment ago, because Jesus promised me he will take me
straight to Paradise, and that I will die as a Christian. ... I am
happy, farewell/' (Night of September 30 to October 1, the sixtieth
anniversary of the death of St. Therese of Lisieux.)

The enigma of sin raises many questions in our minds, and first of
all questions on the enigma of the human being in his relationship
with God. “One can also say that there are two categories of men:
those who— what mystery!— are capable of assimilating sin, and those
who are not capable of doing so (by virtue of some mystery of pre-
destination . . .).

“Those who are capable of assimilating sin, of living with sin, al-
most of living on it; of drawing from it a useful experience, a certain
human enrichment, a development, even a perfecting, in the order of
mercy and humility— of arriving, finally, at the knowledge of God, at
a certain theodicy, through extreme experience of the misery of the
sinner. The Russians are like this, as typified in Dostoievsky's charac-
ters. What is rare about them is that they are conscious of this capac-
ity to profit in the end from sin. The majority of sinners have
this capacity too, without knowing it.

“Those who are incapable of assimilating sin, because the smallest
deliberate sin is like a fishbone stuck in their throat, cannot rest till
they have got rid of it by contrition and confession. These are called
to be assimilated to Christ. They can accept or refuse. It is a redoubt-
able moment when they hear this call— it is the voice of Jesus him-
self." 128

Why should the smallest deliberate sin be to such souls like a fish-
bone in the throat? Because they fear hell? Certainly not. Fear of
damnation may invade them at certain moments of trial and extreme
affliction, but it is certainly not the substance of their lives. The holy
fear of God is a fear of offending him, always present because of his
infinite transcendence; it is not a fear of him. Fear is a poor regime
for the human soul. It is because so many men are still far from God
that they have a fear entirely different from the holy fear of God,
and which ravages them, a fear of the sanctions of his law— and of
God himself.

129 Journal de Raissa , op. cit. y pp. 226-227.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 45

“If your right eye is an occasion of sin to you, pluck it out" (Matt.
5:29). We were told this out of love, not out of a fear of being dis-
obeyed which is proper to the rulers of the earth. And it is love that
echoes the precept in us. The closer man comes to God, the more he
understands his love and his mercy— did Jesus not come “for sinners,
rather than for the just" (Matt. 9:13), did he not tell Peter to forgive
seventy-seven times seven times? And the parable of the prodigal son,
and Jesus at the table of Lpvi,j5on of Alphaeus, and at the table of
Zacchaeus, and Jesus at Jacob's well confiding unheard secrets to the
Samaritan woman, and Jesus before the adultress, and Jesus while
Mary Magdalene kisses his feet and covers them with perfume? Has
not God a passion to pardon? To such a point that he cannot help
himself, as soon as anybody recognizes himself as a sinner? “If some-
one speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him;
but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be
forgiven" (Luke 12:10). Sin against the Holy Spirit is sin against
Love and Mercy, which prevents us from asking God's pardon. “Her
sins, many as they are, shall be forgiven her, because she has loved
much. The one to whom less is forgiven has a less great love." (Luke

7 : 47)

When they think of such words, are not the saints tempted to envy
sinners, and that sort of truly mad trust, enormous to the point of
breaking any norm, by which, in wounding God and in breaking his
law, they still (without knowing it— though Dostoievsky's sinners
have some suspicion of this) render homage to the infinity of his
mercy? Does the obedient trust of the saints seem less abandoned
(less “mad")? In reality it is more abandoned, because there is no
fear in it except the fear of offending God; the fear of punishment
for themselves, fear for their own skin, has been eclipsed; and their
trust demands nothing less than the Infinite One, the Inaccessible
One, the divine Life, the kiss of God; their trust is mad with love.
Let them not be afraid of having a less great love because less has been
forgiven them (they have asked pardon for all human weakness and
all the sins of men, they have opened themselves more widely to the
supreme gift and pardon that is grace). Whether they have known
sin like Magdalene or Augustine, or always preserved the innocence
of baptism like Thomas Aquinas or St. Louis de Gonzaga, is all the
same— theirs is the greatest love.

M 6 JACQUES MARITAIN

What is it, then, that is like a fishbone in the throat to men who
are “incapable of assimilating sin”? It is not fear, it is love. They know
what love is, and what sin is— it has crucified the God they love. They
are drunk with love for God and for Jesus. Through this love they
are riveted to Jesus, and to the desire to enter into his heart and into
his work, and to carry with him that cross which saves the world.

As to the sinners of Dostoievsky, what they have in their own
right, it seems to me, is that, unlike others, they are, in sin— and even
with I know not what complacency— attentive to the misery of sin,
and have also within them, rooted in the irrational depths of the soul,
an obscure awareness of that enormous and reckless trust of which I
have just spoken, and on which they play their game— as long as
despair and suicide do not come along. And they do not know what
love is, because they are afraid of it.

☆

One cannot love Jesus without wanting to enter into his work. All
those who are dedicated to contemplative prayer, whether in religious
communities or on the roads of the world, know this equally well. I
readily believe that in religious communities, because, there, one has
left everything for God, there are more who put this knowledge into
practice, sometimes heroically. But those who walk along the roads of
the world, deprived of the help that consecrated people find in their
rule and in their vows, are at least offered by their secular life, I think,
a kind of compensation: that thing— the call to enter into Christ's
work— which it matters essentially to know, they are constantly re-
minded of it, because they live in the midst of sinners.

To enter into the work of Jesus is to participate in the work of
redemption that he accomplished fully by himself; it is to pursue
with him and through him, as being one with him, a work of core-
demption that will be fully accomplished only at the end of the
world, and to which all Christians are called in one degree or another,
and under one form or another.

It was not by some gesture of royal amnesty, as He could so easily
have done (a single cry of pity before the Father, coming from him,
could have saved mankind), that Christ carried out the mission for
which he was a man like us. He made atonement in strict justice , 129

129 He only merited and could merit for others in strict justice and by a right
acquired in this way.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 47

and for all the sins of all men, because he willed to take all men in
himself, and "all human suffering /' 130 And he also willed, because of
his love for them and because of the superabundance "beyond any
measure of reason" which is proper to God, that they themselves
consummate this work of redemption with him and through him
present in them— each for his own sake at first, freely receiving grace,
along with the merits communicated by it and by the infinite merits
of Jesus— and each for the pthers, paying also for them, not in strict
justice (only Christ could do that), but through an effect of the
superabundance of the love in which he unites them to himself, and
by virtue of those "rights" of another nature, gratuitous rights freely
granted by the Loved One to the loving one, which the union of love
creates . 131

Here is that coredemption, the notion of which has such capital im-
portance, and is called upon, I think, to enlighten and help Christian
consciousness more and more. Through coredemption— following in
the footsteps of the Virgin, who is Coredemptrix in a unique and
absolutely super-eminent sense proper to her alone— all the redeemed
(to infinitely different degrees, the indigence of some being com-
pensated for by the abundance of others) pursue with Christ, and
through him, and in him, his work of redemption, being raised by
his love and his generosity from being simply redeemed to being
redeemers as well.

" 'Jesus will be in agony till the end of the world/ There must be
souls in which he continues to agonize." 132

The "sensible Christians" who do not understand these things
would do well, it seems to me, to ask themselves why the self-
subsisting Being, who consummates in himself and in his infinite
transcendence all the plenitude and perfection of being, wanted
nonetheless to create other beings, who add absolutely nothing to
divine Being, but into whom are poured out, infinitely remote from
his infinite Perfection, finite participations in him. The same sensible

130 Sum. theol.y III, 9.46, a. 5.

131 It is this that the theologians — in a traditional jargon the specialists are
fond of, but which is rather incongruous when applied to what is most precious in
the world— call merit de congruo , in opposition to merit de condigno , of which
only the Incarnate Word was capable. They seem to take pleasure in being under-
stood only among themselves, to the exclusion of other mortals. . . .

132 Journal de Raissa, op. cit. t pp. 233-234.

248 JACQUES MARITAIN

Christians would do equally well, it seems to me, to ask themselves
why Christ, who saved all, in one single moment of time, by the
sacrifice of Calvary, has willed to have that sacrifice perpetuated all
the days of our time through the Mass, which renders it sacramentally
present on the altar.

There is a remarkable study on coredemption by Father Marie-
Joseph Nicolas , 133 who, with a theologian's authority I am far from
pretending to, gives us basic insight into the subject. Father Nicolas
is careful to establish the essential distinction we must make between
the unique coredemption of Mary mediatrix, participant in the work
of the Redeemer Jesus— in her inferior status as creature receiving all
from her Son (but immaculate creature)— in the very act of re-
demption, and, on the other hand, the common coredemption to
which all Christians are called, and which makes them participate in
the work of Jesus the Redeemer only as to the application of the fruits
of redemption. I am sorry I cannot reproduce here this entire study.
Still I would like to quote a few passages that I found particularly
significant.

“It is a greater thing for man to redeem himself , to make atone-
ment himself for the evil he did , to rehabilitate himself , than to be
saved without doing anything himself. Hence it follows that the
economy of Redemption is dominated entirely and down to its last
detail by the idea that man must save himself . It is because man is
incapable of doing so that God becomes man. But in making himself
man he did not destroy the part that man has to play in Redemption.
On the contrary, he made it fully possible." 134

“Christ did not want to take advantage of being God in order to
suffer less. He bore upon himself all the weight that one who would
have been purely a man would have had to bear, he redeemed us as
man , his divinity diminishing nothing of the human burden, but
taking it upon itself and endowing his actions as man with the su-
preme value of infinite sanctity and the universal range of action
that the most painful purely human sufferings could never have at-
tained. God did not make himself man in order to dispense man
from satisfying and atoning, but on the contrary in order to permit
him to do so. From this it follows, as far as we are able to understand

133 M.-J. Nicolas, “La Co-redemption/’ Revue Thomiste, 1947, I.

Ibid., p. 30.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

249

the profound mystery of the Cross, that the Divine Will linked our
( salvation to an act [a human act of a Person who was God ] that by
its nature comprises all that mankind would have had to suffer in
order to purify itself of its faults. Christus sustinuit omnem passi -
onem humanam .” 135

Consequently, "Christ, far from dispensing us from suffering and
death by his sacrifice, invites us to follow him and to reenact in our-
selves, for us and for our brothers, that Passion which superabundantly
merits for us all grace and all beatitude. ... If the Passion of Christ
were not continued in humanity, it would not be a sufficiently
human work. . . ” Commenting on the celebrated text of St. Paul
to the Colossians already quoted in this book, St. Thomas states:

"What was lacking in Christ's own sufferings was that they had not
suffered by him in the bodies of St. Paul and of other Christians .” 136
Consequently, we must say that "the entire Church is Coredemp-
trix 137 since she cooperates in the redemption of men, not only as an
instrument of the grace of Christ but by the offering of her own
sacrifice / 7 138 And by the same token we must say that "all Chris-
tians are coredeemers / 7 139

"Of course, many men will be saved without having contributed v
their full share. Others, on the contrary, will have given in super-

135 Ibid., p. 31. The text quoted is taken from the Sum. theol., Ill, 46, 5.

136 Ibid., p. 32. Cf. p 184; also farther, p. 252.

137 The entire ClWch is coredemptrix; the saints above all, but also all the
“good people” of whom Tauler speaks, or in brief, all the baptized, as Cardinal
Joumet says, in the pages of v. II of UEglise du Verbe Incame in which he treated
of coredemption (pp. 221-227 and 323-340).

“ 'And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grate/ ( John 1:16).

In passing from the head to the members, from Christ to the Church, grace does
not lose its properties; and as it impelled Christ to satisfy, it will impel Christians
following in his footsteps to join in the great movement of reparation to God for
the sins of the world. What Christ did, Christians will strive to do, following his
example: 'Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should
follow in his steps’ (I Peter, 2:21). How would there be, between the Head and
the Body, symbiosis and synergy if the action begun in the Head did not spread
in the rest of the Body, if the suffering endured by Christ were not completed in
his disciples? 'Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I
complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his Body, that is,
the Church' (Col. 1:24). The difficulty does not lie in explaining so simple a truth;
it lies rather in explaining how Protestantism came to reject it'' (op. cit., p. 221).

The question of coredemption has already been touched on p. 184.

138 Ibid., p. 44.

139 Ibid., p. 33.

250 JACQUES MARITAIN

abundant measure. As charity grows, there is a proportionate increase
in the desire and power of cooperating in the salvation of many
souls. Some, by special function and by their state of life , are thus
dedicated to the work of salvation, and the charity that they dispense
in the service of the Church inspires not only apostolic action but
self-sacrifice on their part whose bearing goes well beyond the efficacy
of their words. To others it is charity alone, without external works,
that gives this destination. Such a one was St. Therese of Lisieux,
who, in the Body of the holy Church, felt herself to be the heart ” 140

"This absolute conformity of the will of the saint to that of God,
which merits for him, St. Thomas said, that God in return accomplish
his will by listening to his prayers for his brothers, is the basis both of
the additional merit due to love, and of the power of intercession.
The greater the charity of a saint, the more powerful is his prayer.
And the more close and personal his ties with the members of the
mystical Body, the more his right to be heard applies to
them. . . .” 141

"Let us not be afraid to see too many creatures associated with this
unique Creature that is the humanity of Christ. Because strictly speak-
ing, the humanity of Christ is created, but it is not a creature; it be-
longs substantially and personally to the Creator. Because of that it
is an instrument of God in a unique and incommunicable sense. It
receives in turn the power of associating with itself the rest of the
created world as a sort of extension of itself, and of communicating
to others from its plenitude without ceasing to be the source and the
first principle. When we have understood that the profound meaning
of the Incarnation is the widest possible diffusion of the divine among
creatures, the whole mystery, not only of the divinization of man,
but of the cooperation of man in his own divinization, becomes
clearer.” 142

I have felt it important to recall the foundation of the doctrine of
coredemption as it has been submitted to our reflection by an emi-
nent theologian. The notion of coredemption, indeed, is as old as
Christianity and the Mass. It is because it is simply but one with the
Christian faith in redemption that this notion took a lot of time to

140 Ibid., p. 33.

141 Ibid., p. 40.

142 Ibid., p. 43.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 5 *

emerge explicitly (in the last centuries of the Middle Ages and in the
following centuries), and finally to find itself denoted by a special
word (about half a century ago, I think), and conceptualized in an
articulated theological doctrine (with the element of controversy
that is never lacking in such cases). The word now has complete
freedom of the city in the Church (it appears in two decrees of the
Holy Office , 143 and equivalent terms have been employed in solemn
documents of the Sovereign 'Pontiffs). And it is in the perspective
pointed out by P£re Nicolas, I have no doubt, that doctrinal agree-
ment will be achieved among Catholic theologians. It would be an
accomplished fact today except for the fear, felt by some of our
scholars, of annoying that good man Luther, a fear that has nothing
to do with a genuinely ecumenical spirit. But this type of easy-going
zeal quickly wears off, and if the common agreement in question is
not for today, it is for tomorrow, I firmly hope so.

In any case, in order to live in their prayers and agonies the reality
of coredemption, with and through Jesus present in us by his grace,
contemplative souls did not wait for the speculative intellect gradu-
ally to disengage the doctrine and explanations which deal with it.
They knew this truth by experience, they knew that, like the truth
(of which it is but an essential aspect) of the redemption by the
“Son of Man/' Head of the mystical Body, it is dear above all to
Christian faith and life. St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Catherine de
Ricci and St. Angela of Foligno, Tauler, St. Paul of the Cross, Marie
of the Incarnation, St. John of the Cross, and St. Therese of Lisieux,
and many others— it is not my task to recall all the great testimony
that contemplatives since the Apostle Paul have given to this truth.

But since this not-too conventional book (or this sort of testament),
written in haste in the evening of my life, is in my mind entirely dedi-
cated to the one who instructed my poor philosopher's head in the
things of God; and since this last chapter, in particular, could not
have been written without the help I have always received from her,
I will certainly be permitted to quote her still further, and to pre-
sent here some of her thoughts on the subject that occupies our
attention.

To a mother tortured by the loss of her child, Ra'issa wrote: “That
Pasch of which the Lord said, 'With desire I have desired to eat this

143 Denzinger, ed. 21-23, 1937, no. 1978 a, n. 2.

251 JACQUES MARITAIN

Pasch with you’ — you are eating it now with our Saviour: the Pasch of
the Passion and of the Crucifixion, through which salvation comes to
men. Through your sorrow and your patience you are coredeemers
with Christ.

“It is the sublime yet ordinary truth of Christianity, that suffering
united with love works salvation . . .

“God has suddenly plunged you both into the very heart of this
ultimate reality: redeeming suffering. And when one knows by faith
(that is to say, with all possible certitude) the marvels he works with
our suffering, with the substance of our crushed hearts— can one
coldly refuse him?” 144

I am still reading from Rai’ssa's notes: “In some manner, I am hav-
ing personal experience of that great mystery St. Paul speaks of, mak-
ing up what is lacking in the Passion of Christ.

“Being the Passion of God, it is forever gathered up into the
eternal. What is lacking to it is development in time .

“Jesus suffered only during a certain time. He cannot himself
develop his Passion and death in time. Those who consent to let them-
selves to be penetrated by him to the point of being perfectly as-
similated to him, accomplish, throughout the whole length of time,
what is lacking in his Passion. They have consented to become flesh of
his flesh. Terrible marriage, in \yhich love is not only strong as death
but begins by being a death, and a thousand deaths.

“ T will espouse thee in blood/

“ T am a bridegroom of blood/

“ Tt is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God/

“And Jesus's words to St. Angela of Foligno: Tt is not in jesting
that I have loved you/ ” 145

All Christians, as Raissa wrote in the letter quoted just before this
text, and as Pere M.-J. Nicolas reminded us earlier, are called to the

144 Journal de Ra'issa , op. cit., p. 105. Further on, apropos of those who by the
grace of Christ belong invisibly to the Church in non-Christian lands: "Can we
not say that the souls which are saved in this way do not collaborate actively in the
salvation of the world? They are saved, but they do not save. . . .” (At least, we
thought, they collaborate actively in the salvation of the world only by the fervor
of their individual intercession, not by virtue of the great common work of
coredemption accomplished by the Body of which Christ is the Head, and into
which the baptized are incorporated perfectly enough for the part to act through
the whole , the member through the whole body.) Ibid., pp. 191-192.

1 4 * Ibid., p. 228.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 53

work of coredemption, some 'without contributing their full share,”
others "giving in superabundant measure.” 146 That superabundant
share is the share of the jcontemplatives, and it is of that share that
Raissa is speaking here.

"There is also,” she adds, "a fulfillment of the Passion which can
be given only by fallible creatures, and that is the struggle against the
fall, against the attraction of this world as such, against the attraction
of so many sins which' represent human happiness. That gift Jesus
could not make to the Father; only we can do it. It involves a manner
of redeeming the world, and of suffering, which is accessible only to
sinners. By renouncing the good things of this world, which, in cer-
tain cases more numerous than one might think^ sin would have pro-
cured us— by giving to God our human and temporal happiness, we
give him, proportionately, as much as he gives us, because we give
him our ail 7 the widow's mite of the Gospel.” 147

Why have I, in a section entitled Contemplation on the roads ,
treated of things that concern all contemplatives, and primarily, no
doubt, those who have left everything to consecrate themselves to
God?

At first, because it seemed to me opportune to recall that they
concern also those who seek to unite themselves to God on the roads
of the World. Then because, in spite of all the difficulties and the ob-
stacles that they encounter on this path— and that oblige them to
adopt a rule of "profound and universal humility,” perpetual thanks-
giving for all the gratuitous blessings they have received, and com-
pletely surrendered trust in the mercy of God— they still have a
certain advantage, with respect to the prise de conscience of the
things in question: I mean, as I have already pointed out, that they,
more than the others, live in constant contact with sinners and with
sin, and therefore with the great mystery into which "so many sin-
ners in the world” force anyone to enter who says to himself: it is for
them that Christ came and that he died on the cross, and he does not
cease to love them and to will their salvation, and his work of re-
demption continued by the Church cannot be in vain.

146 Cf. p. 249.

147 Journal de Raissa , op. cit. f pp. 228-299.

2 54

JACQUES MAR I T A I N

THE DISCIPLES JAMES AND JOHN

In the life of every contemplative— depending on Christ’s choice,
or, in other words, on the requests (sometimes unconscious, per-
haps) of the soul and the reply which is made— in the life of every
contemplative there may come a moment when it is necessary to
answer a great and redoubtable question— even if while not daring to
say yes, out of fear (and there is good reason to be afraid), but know-
ing that that point must certainly be passed and relying on the
grace of God, and, in fact, accepting by not saying no— the great and
redoubtable question that the Lord asked James and John— the ques-
tion of the Chalice: “Potestis bibere calicem , quern ego bibiturus
sum” are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink? (Matt.
20:22). This moment is indeed a crucial one.

Pere Lallemant, in La Doctrine Spirituelle, told us on the other
hand: “It is necessary only to renounce for once and for all, all our
advantages and all our satisfactions, all our designs and all our desires,
in order to depend no longer on anything but God’s good pleasure.”
And the moment in which the soul makes this renunciation he calls
the moment of passing over the< step. This also depends on the free
choice of Jesus, in other words on the desires of the soul and the re-
sponse that they receive.

I think that the moment of the Chalice and the moment of passing
over the step are but one and the same; 148 and that it presents itself
to such and such among us in a different fashion, by reason of the fact
that among the souls that have passed under the regime of the gifts of
the Holy Spirit, some find themselves above all under the regime of

148 The moment of which I am speaking here must not be confused with
another, which precedes it (cf. p. 231) in which the soul passes under the regime
of the gifts , or enters into the life of the spirit. In the moment when it entered
under the regime of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the soul, in a manner completely
hidden in the spiritual supra -conscious, crossed a threshold, the end of a transi-
tional phase which also is too profound to be perceived by consciousness. From
that point on the soul will live under the habitual motion of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit.

In the moment of which I am speaking here the soul is already under the regime
of these gifts, and it is to a consciously perceived call, to a question that it must
answer.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 55

those (Wisdom, Understanding and Knowledge) which are con-
cerned more with contemplative life, and others find themselves
under the regime of the gifts which are more concerned with active
life (the first three gifts are always there, of course, in this seven-
stringed lyre on which God plays at will in the soul, but vibrating
then under less frequent and lighter touches, like a muted accompani-
ment of the stronger sound of the other strings).

Among the souls who have-entered into the life of the spirit, there-
fore, there are those who are engaged in the active life (they also have
| the contemplation of love, but atypical or masked)— let us say that
they follow the lead of Martha, or of the Apostle James; and there are
some who are engaged above all, or exclusively, in the contemplative
life— let us say that they follow the lead of Mary, the sister of Martha,
or that of John, whose head rested on the heart of Jesus at the Last

Supper. For the latter, the moment of which we are speaking now, if

( and when it comes, presents itself, no doubt, with particular clarity
and sharpness.

In any case, for both groups it is one and the same moment: the
moment when they are called to become disciples , and when they ac-
t cept or reject the call. (In my opinion refusal is probably quite rare,

| yet there is the case of the rich young man who would certainly have

wanted to be perfect, and who went away sorrowful . . .) (Matt.

i 19:22).

There I am touching on something that seems to me terribly mys-
1 terious, but of which we must try to be somewhat aware, since its role

, is of primary importance in the general economy of Christianity: the

distinction we must recognize, among the members of the People of
I God, between the disciples and the great mass of— let us not say “the

I ordinary Christians,” which would be a rather inept expression, for a
Christian is never ordinary — let us say the always beloved of Jesus, for
whom he gave his Blood, whom he thirsts to save, and for whom his
Mother weeps in beatitude. What are we to think, then? It is the dis-
ciples that he entrusts in particular with doing the job with him and
fj through him.

We must admit that they are probably not numerous. Here I quote
J Raissa :

“ Tf any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and

t

256 JACQUES M ARITAIN

wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also,
he cannot be my disciple . 7 ( Luke 14:26)

“The demands of Christ as regards his disciples are absolutely inhu-
man, they are divine. There is no doubt about it, he who wishes to be
Christ's disciple — must hate his own life. The image of Jesus Cruci-
fied is for the disciple.

“But such demands are only for the disciples. As regards the com-
mon body of men, Christianity is human in the sense that it accepts
men in their weakness and inconstancy, and also in their nature at-
tached to natural goods (father, mother, etc.). They will never feel
an inward call as severe as the one that St. Luke records.

“All that is demanded of them is to believe, to love, and to con-
tinue to hope after they have gone astray, however wildly.

“Thus it is not the sinners, the 'worldly,' who have the greatest
fear of God— rather it is those who, having been chosen as disciples,
know that they are, and will be, more severely treated. From these,
all is demanded." 149

And Raissa said further: “I am coming now to take humanity
quietly— for what it is. Without exclamations— regrets— sighs— and
groans. In a way quite different from that of Leibnizian optimism— all
is for the best. God knows what he permits.

“He is not like a man who regretfully permits what he cannot pre-
vent. He has let men go their own way armed with their freedom— and
they go it. They go, gamble and work, risk everything— win more or
less, and perhaps will end by winning everything. God has simply
reserved for himself one Man who is his Son. And this Man-God calls
to himself, for his own work (which he also has to do with human
freedom), calls a small number of men— a handful in every century
— to work in his own way. 'He who would be my disciple, let him take
up his cross and follow me'— and that is sufficient.

“To all is given the precept of charity— the duty of hope— and this
Word which is the foundation of hope: 'Much will be forgiven her for
she has loved much.' " 160

I have just said that this book, written by the old Jacques with the
liberty of those who have seen too much, is all dedicated to Raissa. It

149 Journal de Raised, op. cit., p. 345.

150 Ibid., p. 341.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 57

is fitting, therefore, that it should close with a text of hers, in which
one feels the urgency of certain things "that must be said to men,”
and of which I think our times stand in particular need.

The True Face of God
or

Love and the Law
(Text of Ra'issa 151 )

Tried and tempted souls feel vaguely that the law, which is so hard
for them to observe, cannot be identified with God who is love.

But this feeling either remains vague, or else leads to a certain con-
tempt for the law, or else turns the soul against God who is then
seen as a hard and exacting master— which is to deny God— or would
be to deny God, if the soul pushed such thoughts to their final con-
clusion, to their logical consequences.

Well, it is salutary to distinguish (to speak in legal terms) the case
of God from the case of the Law.

Only by grasping that distinction, can the soul behave as it should
toward God— and toward the law.

When Jesus felt himself abandoned by God on the Cross, it was be-
cause the face of Love was then hidden from him, and the whole of his
humanity was subjected to the law, without any mitigation— some-
thing which no man except the Man-God would have been able to
endure without dying.

Jesus on the Cross, and very particularly at that moment of total
dereliction, suffered the full rigor of the law of the transmutation of
one nature into another — as if he had not been God; it was his hu-
manity as such, taken from the Virgin, which had to feel the full
weight of this law. For the head must experience the law that he im-
poses on his members. Because, having assumed human nature, he
had to experience this supreme law to which human nature, called to
participate in the divine nature, is subject.

And if he had not suffered from the rigor of this law, it would not

151 Ibid., p. 341.

258 JACQUES MARITAIN

have been possible to say that the Word took a heart like our own in
order to feel for our sufferings.

This law of the transformation of natures— which comprises in it
all moral and divine laws— is something necessary, physical, ontologi-
cal if you like— God himself cannot abolish it, just as he cannot pro-
duce the absurd.

But this law— the Law— is not He— He is Love.

So when a soul suffers, and suffers from this inexorable Law of
transmutation of a nature into a higher nature (and this is the mean-
ing of all human history)— God is with this nature which he has made
and which is suffering— he is not against it. If he could transform that
nature into his own by abolishing the law of suffering and death, he
would abolish it— because he takes no pleasure in the spectacle of pain
and death. But he cannot abolish any law inscribed in being.

The face of the law and its rigor, the face of suffering and death is
not the face of God; God is love.

And his love has made him behave toward men in a way that may
seem capricious.

To the Ancients, like Abraham and the other Patriarchs, he did not
reveal the whole law; in that state- of nature he did not even reveal to
men all the moral laws inscribed in nature. Because the observation of
the whole body of these laws would have supposed the perfection of
human nature to be already realized— and this was not so— or else
would have demanded the help of Christie graces 152 which were not
yet acquired. Hence that strange liberty left to men in the state of na-
ture — even when these men are Abram , 153 Isaac and Jacob— and
then Moses and the Jews, up to the coming of Christ. And yet it was
in this state that God chose Abram to be the Father of Believers.

Abram, this simple man, with a heart which never resists the voice
of God. He believes God who speaks to him. He does what God tells
him to do. He goes from sacrifice to sacrifice: first he leaves his country

152 All graces received by men since the fall of Adam are Christie graces. But
Ra'issa is speaking here of the graces of Christ come , or of sacramentally Christie
graces. [J.]

153 Abraham was first called Abram; that is why Rai'ssa, in this passage, freely
used the two names. Cf. her Histoire d’ Abraham ou les premiers ages de la con-
science morale. English translation in v. I of The Bridge , published by Msgr. John
Oesterreicher. [Trans.]

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 59

and his father— the hearths of Ur of the Chaldees— he accepts the
nomadic life. And then he quits easy faith; it is relatively easy to be-
lieve God when he promises abundant blessings— and an immense
posterity— but when the only son, the still sterile boy, has to be sacri-
ficed, how painful it is to believe! And it would even be impossible
to obey— since obedience here requires the commission of what ap-
pears to be a crime— if faith did not lead Abram as if by the hand.

Never was greater grace of faith in God given to any man. And
never was any man greater in his fidelity— if we except Joseph and
Mary.

Thus Abraham, too, knew the hard law of the transformation of
the natural man into the spiritual and divine man— but with a wide
zone of human liberty in which many laws, left in shadow by God,
were put in parenthesis.

And, as for us, he has revealed to us all the terrible demands of the
divinization of man.

But in order to reveal them to us, he came himself— not with the
blood of goats and bulls— but with the Blood of Christ through which
his Love for us is made visible.

Thus the new Law is harsher than the old Law.

But at the same time the love of God (which softens everything)
is more widespread.

It is in the blood of Jesus Crucified that the Sacraments are bom,

whether they purify— Baptism

whether they vivify— Penance

whether they bring growth— the Eucharist . . .

The law— all the laws— having become so clearly, and so terribly
visible,

the face of the love of God thus risks being obscured.

This is why it is more necessary than ever to distinguish between
Love and the Law.

When nature, called upon to obey, groans and suffers, she is not
hateful to God, for quitting its own shape is a loss for all nature— a
suffering for natures endowed with sensibility.

When human nature shrinks back and fails in this labor, it is not
hateful to God; he loves it, he wants to save it— he does save it, pro-
vided it does not want to be separated from him, provided it recog-
nizes the need of purification for salvation: if a sinner recognizes this

i6o JACQUES MARITAIN

only at the hour of his death, he is saved and goes to Purgatory to be
purified.

So what one must first and foremost tell men, and go on telling
them, is to love God— to know that he is Love and to trust to the end
in his Love.

The law is just. The law is necessary— with the very necessity of
transformation for salvation, that is to say, for eternal life with God.

But the law is not God.

And God is not the law. He is Love.

If God has the face of the law for men— men draw back because
they feel that love is more than the law— in this they are wrong only
because they do not recognize the salutary necessity of the law.

But the observation of the Law without love would be of no avail
for salvation.

And love can save a man even at the last second of a bad life— if, in
that second, the man has found the light of love— perhaps if he has al-
ways believed that God is Love.

Souls must be delivered from that feeling of enmity they experi-
ence (passively and actively) toward God when they see him in the
apparatus of laws which to them is an image hostile to love— and
which masks God's true face.

The Cross- it was the Law that imposed it on Jesus— so Jesus took
it in order to share the harshness of the law with us.

These things must be said to men. If these things were not said,
men would draw away from God when they suffer, because the law is
a thing which seems to separate us from God, and then it presents it-
self — if we do not think of love — as our enemy , and God can never
present himself as an enemy.

Law is, in a certain manner, opposed to love. God has made it inso-
far as he is the Creator of being. But insofar as he is our end and our
beatitude, he calls us beyond it.

The law is proposed externally, it implies a subjection— in itself it
seems to have nothing to do with mercy— nor with the equality of
friendship— nor with familiarity.

It is truly a necessity; only a necessity.

Love gives over the head of the Law.

It forgives.

Love creates trust— freedom of spirit— equality— familiarity.

APPENDICES

i ON. A TEXT OF ST. PAUL

(CF. CHAPTER 5, P. 11 9)

In an attempt to give support to his idea of a cosmic Christ, Teilhard
invokes the thought of St. Paul, but in doing so he teilhardizes Paul in
a way which cannot be accepted.

Let us reread the great text of the Epistle to the Romans ( 8 :
12-22) : “I consider that the sufferings of the present time are out of
all proportion to the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation
in expectancy is longing for the revelation of the sons of God” [in
glorified mankind]. "Indeed the creation has been subjected to van-
ity [rrj fiaTaLOTrjTi] (not of its own will, but because of [Slo] him who
subjected it) in hope, because the creation itself will be set free from
the servitude to corruption so as to enter into the liberty of the
children of God. For we know that the whole creation is groaning and
in pains of childbirth up to that day.” 1

Christian thought did not wait for Pere Teilhard to understand the
words of St. Paul as it should be, that is, in a cosmic sense. The Greek
Fathers already understood them in this sense, as did St. Thomas
when he spoke in this connection (Comm, on the Epistle to the
Romans, Ch. IV) of the elementa hujus mundi. But it would be
senseless to look on the final end in question— the liberation awaited
by creation— as the end result of the Evolution of created things in
their ascent toward God and toward the Omega Point — an Evolution
that can be conceived only as being of a natural order (even assuming
that a cosmic Christ is the Prime Mover and the Noyau collecteur , the
Nucleus in whom everything is gathered. Because if St. Paul's text
gives the exegetes a great deal of trouble, one thing is still perfectly
clear: that creation awaits a certain fulfillment of a supernatural order ,
since it is tied to the revelation of the sons of God and to the glory
that is to be revealed in us, and to entering into the glorious liberty of

261

1 The author's translation.

262 JACQUES MARITAIN

the children of God; that is, in the new world that will be inaugurated
by the Resurrection of the dead.

"Creation was subjected to vanity not of its own will” (that is to
say, against a consubstantial desire— it is a question of what philoso-
phers and theologians call un Desir de nature , a "nature-desire,” in-
scribed in the very being of things— or an ontological desire, even in
man, in whom this "nature-desire” gives rise to a conscious desire),
creation "will be set free from the servitude to corruption ” What
greater vanity and what worse servitude than that of beings subject to
corruption, and of living beings subject to death? ("Who will free me
of this body of death?” asks St. Paul.) The "nature-desire” we are
speaking of is the desire to escape corruption and death. It is inscribed
in every being here on earth. But it is man who brings it out into the
light of consciousness and gives it a voice— a voice that is not simply
man's voice but that of the entire (material) creation, which man
epitomizes in himself: in such a way that when man bemoans corrup-
tion and death, he expresses not only the desire of man but the desire,
carried to its highest point, of all of creation. And yet what is more
impossible, for all creatures in this world, than escaping (through the
sole forces of nature) corruption and death?

It is through the supernatural transfiguration of man, head of all
creation (bound to matter, let it be understood— man himself is a
being of flesh) and by virtue of this transfiguration, it is through the
glory that will be revealed in us, it is through the revelation of the
sons of God , it is through entering into the liberty proper to their
glory, that the creation will find itself supernaturally transfigured,
transferred to a new world, or (in a perfectly unimaginable way,
moreover) will no longer be subject to corruption and death, and will
be set free.

Until that day it will groan, and will continue to suffer the pains of
childbirth (“in hope,” that is, while hoping for liberation) . That does
not mean that the coming of the world of glory will be the fruit of
cosmic Evolution! The great rupture caused by the thunderlightning
of the Resurrection, which will change everything, will have put an
end to the Evolution of the world in order to inaugurate the eternal
age of glorified matter and glorified man. The new world will be born
of the pains and groans of the creature, but as the fruit of its trans-
figuration by an act of God above the entire natural order and the
evolution of the world.

There is no reason to be astonished that a "nature-desire” might
long for something that goes beyond nature, and which nature is un-
able to satisfy; it is rather the contrary that would be surprising. An-

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

263

other example, a classic one in theology, of a “nature-desire” whose
fulfillment cannot but be supernatural, is the desire to see God's es-
sence. This desire is natural to man; he desires, precisely because of
his intellectual nature, to see the Cause of being in its essence; and
there is nothing in the equipment of his intellect (nor in that of the
angel) that gives him the power to do so. To see God (to see God in
so far as he is God, not in so far as he is the Cause of what is not
God), the human intellect must be supernaturally transfigured, and
it must see God not Through any of the intelligible forms the recep-
tion of which can “actuate” it naturally, but through God himself,
through the divine essence itself filling the created intellect with its
infinite intelligibility, and talcing within it the place of any intelligible
form of which this intellect can make use as a natural means of know-
ing.

Since the text of St. Paul with which this note is dealing has been
subjected all through the history of the Church to the most varied
interpretations (those of the Teilhardians not included), and since
this text is considered, it would seem, “the exegete’s cross,” I have
deemed it permissible for a philosopher to suggest the interpretation
that seems correct to him, after a meditation sufficiently free of in-
timidating preconceptions.

As to the clause because of him who subjected it (the creation has
been “subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him
who subjected it . . .”), that clause refers, I think, to the pain suf-
fered by all of creation from the fact of original sin, original sin having
not only caused man to lose the immortality proper to the preter-
natural gifts of the state of innocence, but having also obliged the
cosmos to remain 2 in that servitude from which it aspires to be set
free. (I am assuming that in what St. Paul says is implied the idea
that if Man had not sinned, he and the cosmos would have been
transferred after a relatively short delay to a final state, “glorious” al-
so, though incomparably less exalted than that which they will enjoy
in fact through the merits of Christ crucified and risen. In such a
glorious state men would have had the vision of God, but not as mem-
bers of the Incarnate Son; and the cosmos would have been freed
from the servitude to corruption, but without participating through
Man in the glory of Christ.)

2 Obviously the non-satisfaction of the trans-natural aspirations of nature could
not, for the cosmos, have been of a penal character before the sin of man. If it
acquired a penal character for the cosmos, it is only inasmuch as the sin of Man
has a repercussion on the cosmos by delaying excessively (with respect to the
original design of the opus CTeativum) the satisfaction of the trans-natural aspira-
tions of the whole (material) creation.

2 ON TWO STUDIES DEALING WITH
THE THEOLOGY OF PERE TEILHARD

(CF. CHAPTER 5, P. 12l)

I am sorry that I did not, until it was too late to mention it in my
text, know of the remarkable study of Claude Tresmontant on "Le
Pere Teilhard de Chardin et la Theologie" (in the periodical Lettre,
nos. 49-50, September-October, 1962), and that I could refer to it only
in this Appendix added after the proofs were ready.

Pere Teilhard was neither a metaphysician nor a theologian; but
Claude Tresmontant rightly lays stress on the fact that an intense
metaphysical and theological preoccupation— entirely dominated, un-
fortunately, by a visionary scientist's cult for the World and for Cos-
mogenesis— was constantly at work in his thought, and constantly
animated it.

It has always been hard for Teilhard to adjust to the Christian idea
of creation. For him, "to create is to unite," 1 which is true only in the
order of things effectuated or "created" by nature and by man. To
create, he says further, is to "unify," 2 to unify the "pure multiple"
—"the scattered shadow of his Unity" that "from all eternity, God saw
beneath his feet," 3 and a "kind of positive Nothingness," 4 "a plea
for being which it looks as if God had not been able to resist." 5 So
that "God consummates himself only by uniting himself" [with the
Else], 6 which is a view of Hegelian theogony rather than of Christian
theology. 7 In 1953, Teilhard wrote: "What infuses Christianity with
life is not a sense of the contingence of the created, but rather a sense
of the mutual Completion of the World and of God 8 — "pletomiza-
tion” he says further, 9 improperly invoking St. Paul: another Hegelian
theme that can perhaps vitalize Teilhardian meta-Christianity, but is
adverse to Christianity.

1 Comment je vois, 1948, Par. 29; Tresmontant, p. 30.

2 La Lutte contre la Multitude, February 26, 1917; Tr., p. 14.

3 Ibid., Tr., p. 13.

4 U Union creatrice , November, 1917; Tr. p. 16.

5 Comment je vois, Par. 28, Tr., p. 28.

6 Ibid., Par. 27; Tr., p. 24.

7 Cf. Tr., p. 27.

8 Contingence de VUnivers et gout humain de survivre; Tr. p. 32.

• Lettre a C. Tresmontant , April 7, 1954; Tr. p. 33.

264

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

265

Apropos of another text of Teilhard: 10 "We become aware that in
order to create (since, once again, to create is to unite), God is in-
evitably induced to immerse himself in the Multitude, in order to
'incorporate it' into himself,” Claude Tresmontant notes (p. 40)
that here Teilhard is alluding to the Incarnation, and that Christian
thought will never accept "to link creation and the Incarnation by a
bond of necessity, nor to call the Incarnation an 'immersion’ in the
Multiple”: which is in keeping with the remarks that I made in
Chapter 5. 11 • ** ’

Another point on which the metaphysical and theological views of
Teilhard clearly depart from Christian thought is the problem of
Evil, a problem that, according to him, "in' our modern perspective of
a Universe in a process of cosmo genesis ' . no longer exists : 12 be-
cause the Multiple, "since it is multiple, that is to say essentially sub-
ject to the play of probabilities of change in its arrangements,” "is
absolutely unable to progress toward unity without engendering Evil
here or there— by statistical necessity.” 13

"Evil,” Claude Tresmontant rightly observes, "is not simply a
temporary defect in a progressive arrangement. The death of six mil-
lion Jews in concentration camps, the resurgence of torture in colonial
wars, are not the result of a wrong arrangement of the Multiple— but
of the perverse freedom of man, of what is properly wickedness, con-
tempt for man, the taste for destruction, falsehood, the will to power,
the passions, the pride of the flesh and of the spirit.” 14 "Evil is the
work of man, and not of matter. Man is fully responsible for the evil
that he does to man, for the crimes against man committed in the
whole of mankind and in all places.” 15 That is what Teilhard has al-
ways been reluctant to see. (He did not cry out in protest against the
extermination of the Jews by the Nazis; while, in spite of the nobility
of his heart, his passion for cosmogenesis led him to write intolerable
lines on the "profound intuitions” of totalitarian systems, on the
Abyssinian War, on the myths of fascism and communism. 16 )

Claude Tresmontant is right to conclude: "No, sin, demoniacal
deeds, cannot be explained by a 'statistical disorder/ This would come

10 Comment je vois, Par. 29; Tr., p. 39.

11 See p. 122.

12 Comment je vots, Par. 29-30; Tr. p. 41.

13 Ibid .

Tr., pp. 42-43
Tr., p.43

Cf. Charles Journet , Nova et Vetera , April-June, 1966, pp. 148, 149

266

JACQUES M ARITAIN

down to transposing to another order, the spiritual one, processes of
thought that are valid in the study of Brownian movements.” 17

As for original sin, it is explained "for Teilhard, like evil, of which
it is only a particular instance, by the Multiple. In summary, it is ma-
teriality that is responsible for evil, for sin, and more particularly for
original sin:— a Platonic, not a Christian explanation.” 18 "For Teilhard,
original sin is coextensive with all of creation, physical as well, and bi-
ological.” 10 On this subject we must read the letter of June 19, 1953,
too long for me to quote it in its entirety, in which Teilhard declared
that "fundamentally, our Universe has always been (and any con-
ceivable Universe could not be otherwise) in its totality and from its
origins, mingled with good and bad turns of luck; that is to say, it is
impregnated with evil; that is to say, in a state of original sin; that is
to say, baptizable.” 20 Here, too, Claude Tresmontant is right to con-
clude (p. 52) : "Sin is not such a thing, it is an act of freedom, and
original sin is the deprivation of divine life. Neither matter nor the
multiple has anything to do with it.”

After a lengthy study on “ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin penseur re -
ligieux ” (Nova et Vetera , October-December 1962), Cardinal Jour-
net published recently— too late for me to make use of it in my text
—a briefer but illuminating article, 21 where we find further impor-
tant remarks on the theological effort of Teilhard, as well as other
distressing quotations from him. I ill quote only one here: "In sud-
den, clear and vivid impressions, I perceive that my strength and my
joy all stem from the fact that I see realized for me, in some manner,
the fusion of God and the World, the latter giving Immediacy to the
Divine, the former spiritualizing the tangible.” 22

Such a text almost makes me regret having suggested in Chapter
5 23 that there were probably touches of supernatural mystique in
the religious experience of Teilhard. For anyone who reflects on this
passage, weighing the meaning of the words, it is in any case a text of
singular significance. In the sudden, clear and vivid impressions of
P£re Teilhard, it is through the World, through the created , that the
Divine was made "immediate” to him! Pere de Lubac assures us that

17 Tr., p.45.

18 Tr. p. 51.

19 Ibid.

2 ° Tr. p. 51.

21 “La synthkse du Pdre Teilhard de Chardin est-elle dissociable?” Nova et
Vetera , April-June, 1966.

22 Joumet, 1918; p. 147. (The word Immediacy is underlined by Teilhard.)

29 See pp. 118-119.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

267

“Pere Teilhard was a mystic. A genuine one.” It all depends on what
one means by “a mystic , a genuine one.” If we mean in the manner
of Ibn 'Arab! and the masters of natural mystique, which can certainly
coexist with the state of grace, then yes, Teilhard was a true mystic
of that mystique. But in the manner of the disciple “whom Jesus
loved,” and of all the masters of that mystique in which the soul is
supernaturally raised to the experience of things divine by the grace
of the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit— in other
words, in the sense fn which a Catholic theologian's readers would
understand, as self-explanatory, the words “a mystic, a genuine one.”
The more I think about it, the more doubtful it seems to me.

I will now quote some passages from Cardinal Journet's conclu-
sion: “Coming paradoxically to the defense of Teilhard,” he writes
(pp. 180-181), “we hold that his doctrine is logical, that his vision of
the world is coherent, that one must either accept it as a whole, or
reject it as a whole. But the dilemma is a serious one.

“If we reject it, we are being faithful to all of traditional Christian-
ity, we are accepting Christian revelation as it has been preserved and
developed in the course of centuries by the divinely assisted magis-
terium. And of course, in this perspective, it will be the duty of
Christian thought to be constantly open and attentive to the prodi-
gious progress of the sciences in our times, and, in particular, to as-
sume, in its proper perspective, all the true and even probably true
elements that are to be found in the idea of the evolution of the
whole universe of matter, and especially of living organisms . . .

“If, on the contrary, we accept Teilhard's vision of the world, we
know from the start — we have been duly warned— which notions of
traditional Christianity will have to be transposed , and which we must
bid farewell: 'Creation, Spirit, Evil, God (and, more particularly,
original Sin, Cross, Resurrection, Parousia, Charity. . . / ” 24

The list is that of Pere Teilhard himself in a text of January 1,
1951, 25 in which he declares that “from the mere transposition” of
the traditional 26 vision into “ dimensions of Cosmogenesis ,” “all these

24 Journet, p. 150.

25 Joumet, p. 146.

26 He describes this vision as “traditionally expressed in terms of Cosmos.” A
singularly meaningful misjudgment of a pseudo-theology obsessed by Physics: as
if traditionally Christian thought had ever, at any time at all since the days of
evangelical preaching, expressed the concepts of Spirit of Evil, of original Sin, of
the Cross, of the Resurrection, of Parousia, of Charity, of God himself, in terms
of Cosmos! The Christian faith tells us that God is the creator of heaven and

268

JACQUES MARITAIN

notions, transported into dimensions of 'genesis/ become clarified
and cohere in an astounding way/' Cardinal Journet is right in observ-
ing that in that case we will have to bid them farewell. Because thus
transported "into dimensions of Cosmogenesis," there remains in
them nothing Christian but the name; they make sense only in a
Gnostic cosmo-theology of a Hegelian variety.

I return to Cardinal Jourfiet's text to quote from it still another
passage. "We hold this inner vision of Teilhard to be powerful and
intrinsically coherent. Consequently, a kind of apologetics that, anx-
ious to be timely, founds upon the evolutionist synthesis of Teilhard,
must, under penalty of lapsing into a 'Religion of Evolution' con-
stantly intervene from outside that synthesis in order to right it and
turn it in the direction of orthodoxy . 27 Such a kind of apologetics will
perhaps have partially happy results in the short run, but not without
laying the groundwork for serious disappointments in the future.
The question that presents itself -here is that of the very nature of
apologetics." 28

"Must apologetics" asks Cardinal Journet, "be primarily preoccu-
pied with timeliness, and turn toward doctrines which, at the price of
serious misunderstandings, . . . have the strongest grip on our
times? ... Or should it turn toward the truest doctrines, whether
they please our contemporaries or not?" 29 I, myself, would ask, with
the bluntness proper to the Peasant of the Garonne: is it the function
of apologetics to lead minds to the Truth by using the seductions
and approaches of any error whatever, as long as with such tricks the
takings are good, since the only thing which matters is efficacy, and
a maximum output in the manufacturing of baptized souls? Is it its
function to produce shock Christians with respect to whom any kind
of stimulant is enough, as soon as they help to make a crowd and are
organized? Or do apologetics have to lead us to Truth via truth,
frankly showing the way to those who have a desire for the Truth
that makes us free, be it in paying the price of curing ourselves of a
lot of illusions? Deus non eget meo mendacio, St. Augustine said:
God does not need my lie.

earth, of all things visible and invisible — Creator of the Cosmos, yes! But it would
be nonsensical to claim that because of that he is conceived in terms of Cosmos.
Whether or not the cosmos is in genesis, God is its Creator by the same right ,
and changing absolutely nothing in the notion of the First Transcendant Cause;
Creation remains, by the same right , creation ex nihilo.

27 A futile job, in my opinion. [J.M.]

28 Journet, p. 151.

29 Ibid.

]

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE 269

But to conclude this Appendix, let us leave Teilhardism and come
back to Pere Teilhard himself. If some readers of the preceding pages,
who perhaps have good reasons to be grateful to him, feel outraged by
my frankness, I beg them simply to turn to the texts from him that I
have quoted, and, leaving my comments aside, to think over these
texts with unbiased attention.

As a matter of fact, Teilhard's ardent metaphysical and theological
concern played a central role in his thought. It is the themes engen-
dered by this constant coricern (noble in itself, but misled) that are
cosmological synthesis. About the evolution of the world and life,'
taken in its reality discernible to reason , it has taught us nothing that
all men of science today did not already know. If we remove the ele-
ment of myth from Teilhard, there remains of his personal contribu-
tion little more than a powerful lyrical impulse, which he himself has
taken for a sort of prophetic anticipation. He was not afraid to see, in
his own case modestly attributed to the favorable workings of "pure
chance (temperament, education, environment)/' a “new proof that
it is enough that Truth appear a single time, in a single mind, then
nothing can prevent it from invading and inflaming all." 30 He was
without a doubt a man of great imagination.

N

*

I

30 Le Christique, March, 1955; Journet, p. 147.

3 A SHORT EPISTEMOLOGICAL
DIGRESSION

(CF. CHAPTER 6, P. 141)

In the text I insisted on the irreducible distinction that must be
recognized between the approach, the mode of conceptualization,
the kind of relation to the real (in other words, the kind of truth)
which are proper to the sciences of nature 1 and those proper to the
philosophy of nature . 2 To come back to that in a slightly more de-
tailed way, I would like to point out first why it has also been said in
the text that the natural sciences of nature themselves are far from
making up a company of the same tenor from the epistemological
point of view.

From the fact that they resort to mathematical intelligibility as
their elected mode of interpreting phenomena, the completely math -
ematized sciences, like nuclear physics, or the more mathematized ,
like physics in general, find themselves, with respect to interpretation
or explanation, transferred, by participation, to the type of intelligi-
bility proper to mathematics, which depends on the "second degree
of abstraction” and which deals, indifferently, with objects of thought
either detached from the real by abstraction, but still corresponding
to some determinate ingredient of the real, or subsequently con-
structed as mere entia rationis or merely ideal entities. In resorting to
mathematical intelligibility as their elected means of interpreting
phenomena, the completely mathematized sciences and the more
mathematized sciences translate, therefore, or transpose the (ob-
served reality) into signs or symbols (whether they be particular sys-
tems of equations or general theories like relativity) which are proper
to the mathematical type of intelligibility and are intelligible only
mathematically. And it is in this way, and in this way only, that they
know, "understand,” or explain "phenomena,” that is to say, the real
observed insofar and only insofar as it is observed . 3 * 5 From that it fol-

1 By “sciences of nature" I mean all sciences (physics as well as biology, etc.)
which deal with things pertaining to the world of matter.

2 To adopt the vocabulary of the Degrees of Knowledge , let us say that the
sciences of nature and the philosophy of nature are both related to the first degree

of abstraction , but the first with a view to an empiriological knowledge and the

other with a view to an ontological knowledge.

5 “Empirio-metrical” or empirio-mathematical knowledge.

270

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

271

lows that they are, no doubt, in their various particular results, preg-
nant with ontological content, but that this ontological content, being
transposed into the symbols and ideal entities of mathematical ex-
planation, remains indiscernible to philosophical intelligence. The
philosopher is therefore justified in saying that the sciences in ques-
tion control matter (and in what a formidable fashion) but as an
unknown reality on which one acts by means of signs, which in a way
links these highly modern sciences with ancient magic.

Yet they themselves do not stop there. By very virtue of their con-
genital aspiration to apprehend the real, an aspiration they share with
the other sciences except for mathematics, they strive to retranslate
their mathematical translation of phenomena into the ordinary
language of men, and for that they resort to hypothetically drawn
pictures of the observed real or pictures of the world which appeal to
the imagination but are, as such, of no avail for philosophical intel-
ligence (except as mere imagery and frame of reference with no on-
tological meaning). Of the ontological content with which these
sciences are pregnant, there is discernible to philosophical intelligence
only the very general existential data, the very general facts that are
part of the first foundations or first coordinates of their whole work .
Philosophical intelligence can avail itself of these general facts only
and give ontological value only to them . 4

Turning now to those sciences of nature which, while of course em-
ploying measure, are not mathematized (biology, psychology, soci-
ology, etc.), they do not translate the observed (observed reality) into
signs or symbols depending on the mathematical type of intelligibil-
ity. It is not by mathematics that they know, “understand” or explain
“phenomena,” that is to say, the real observed insofar and only insofar
as it is observed. It is by the observable that they explain the observa-
ble , 5 or in other words by “causal” relationships or rather links of
conditioning between phenomena. (And this is the reason why the
ontological content with which they are pregnant may be discernible
to the philosophical intelligence in certain of the particular results
themselves of the scientific elaboration.)

But whether one considers the mathematized sciences or the non-
mathematized sciences, they all have in common this essential char-
acter of depending (whether primarily or totally) on that intellection

4 It is just so, it seems to me, that Claude Tresmontant proceeds with respect to
astrophysics, in his work on the problem of the existence of God y mentioned
previously.

5 “Empirio-schematic,” or simply empiriological knowledge.

272 JACQUES MARITAIN

of an empiriological order 6 which takes hold of the real insofar and
only insofar as it is observable. Empirio-mathematical or simply em-
piriological, it is not their business to use signs grasped in experience
in order to attain, through them, the real in its ontological structure
or in its being, by a type of intellection 7 that penetrates to the very
essence (not apprehended in itself, certainly, but through those of its
properties that fall under experience, outward or inward). That is
why, as I insisted in Chapter 6, there is an absolutely typical, essential,
difference between philosophical knowledge and scientific (in the
modern sense of the word) knowledge, and in particular between the
philosophy of nature and the sciences of nature taken in general.

The ancients were not aware of this distinction because their sci-
ence was still in homogeneous continuity with their philosophy of
nature and still used the same conceptual vocabulary as the latter. If
the Thomist philosophy of nature needs to be reshaped, it is not only
because the science with which it was connected no longer has any
value, it is also (and primarily) because this connection itself was of a
kind that is now worthless. In the course of the last three centuries
science has in effect won complete autonomy with respect tt) philoso-
phy, and this only intensifies the urgency of the reshaping in question.

Such a reshaping must take into account, first of all the fundamen-
tal epistemological datum that I am trying to emphasize here: there
is continuity, no doubt, between the sciences of nature and the
philosophy of nature, but not the homogeneous continuity the an-
cients believed there to be (from the very fact that their science was
not yet autonomous). It is a continuity of connection between areas
of knowledge of specifically different types. The philosophy of nature
does not have to reinterpret in its (ontological) fashion the various
pictures of the macroscopic or microscopic world drawn by science
(this would be a pretty mess, especially in dealing with mathema-
tized sciences); it has to judge of the epistemological value of these
pictures, and above all it has to disengage— wherever possible— from
the researches and discoveries of science the ontological content with
which they are pregnant — a job in which science is not interested.
This content may be of great philosophical value without, for that
matter, being furnished in great abundance by science. As examples
of such content I might mention, on one hand, the simple, very gen-
eral fact, of basic value to astrophysics and nuclear physics, that the
cosmos itself and all that is contained within it, down to the ele-

6 “Perinoetic” intellection.

7 “Dianoetic” intellection.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 73

mentary structures of matter, is in a state of evolutionary becoming;
and on the other hand I would mention the fact, woven into the
particular results of scientific elaboration (but already known by the
ancients), that between the chemical and the biological (the simplest
living cell) there is an uncrossable threshold that has been crossed. It
is the business of philosophy to interpret these facts in its own per-
spective.

, 4 , **

In brief, we are confronted here with two knowing entities which
are working according to two fundamentally different operational
systems. Let us think of two typewriters equipped with different key-
boards— or, to use another comparison, of two singers whose ear and
voice would supposedly be naturally attuned to two different musical
keys: the scientist singing only songs composed in G, and the philoso-
pher only songs composed in E. If they are to sing together, it will
be necessary for the scientist to learn how to sing (m6re or less well)
in E, and, similarly, for the philosopher to learn how to sihg (more
or less well) in G. These more or less felicitous comparisons lead us
back to the two different keyboards of which I spoke earlier. 8

We might add that the experimental data of which intellection of
an ontological order makes use, and on which the philosophy of na-
ture has to be constructed, are not only those that the sciences of na-
ture furnish and from which an ontological content can sometimes be
extracted. There is a vast field of experience and observation open to
the natural intelligence of man where the philosopher, if he has
enough discernment, can find, without needing to resort to the sci-
ences of nature, a whole available stock of simpler, and more obvious,
data offered by sensible experience. That is why a duly reshaped
Thomist philosophy of nature will, in this very reshaping, have to take
into account many principles and fundamental notions already used
by St. Thomas (amid the exemplifications of an unfortunate scien-
tific context).

8 Chapter 6, pp. 140-141.

4 ON THE UNITY AND VISIBILITY
OF THE CHURCH

(CF. CHAPTER J, P. l8l)

I take the liberty, in this Appendix, to submit to the judgment of the
theologians some ideas that I believe to be true, but that I express in
my own manner as a philosopher.

One must say, it seems to me, that— precisely because the Una
Sancta is the one and only Church of Christ— her intrinsic organic
unity , which is perfect in the Catholic Church and is perfect only
there, deteriorates to the degree that it extends beyond this great city
perfectly one, and beyond the personality whose seal she bears, to em-
brace all those men (whether they belong to non-Catholic or to non-
Christian religious families, or profess unbelief or atheism) who live
in the grace of Christ and charity: so that all those are, in an imper-
fect way, no doubt, but in act, members, invisibly, of the only fully
formed and fully visible Church, which is the Catholic Church.

One must also say, it seems to me, that the visibility of the Church
is a dependent variable of the unity that binds together the members
of her body, animated as it is by charity, which is her soul: full and
complete visibility when the unity of the body is full and complete
(that is to say, in the Catholic Church)— diminished, and further and
further and diminished, to the extent that the unity of the body de-
creases more and more as it extends beyond the perfectly one struc-
ture which is that of the Catholic Church.

Here we are confronted with the question of the body of the
Church and of her visibility. When we speak of the “body” of the
Church as contradistinguished from her soul, the word “body” does
not mean the mystical Body, because the mystical Body obviously
comprises the soul as well as the “body” of the Church (it includes
even the angels, St. Thomas says). The body of the Church is first of
all the human beings who (belonging to her openly and normally if
they are baptized) are living in grace and charity (which is the created
soul of the Church)— human beings, at once carnal and spiritual, and
visible insofar as carnal. But it is not exactly by reason of the visibility
of these men that the Church is visible; it is by reason of the visibility
of the things that she herself accomplishes when she possesses her
full and complete unity: her profession of faith, her form of worship,
her sacraments, her teaching and judicial authority — and likewise her

2 74

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 75

fecundity, visible through all centuries, in engendering saints— are
things that are apparent to the senses and outwardly manifested.
The men who are her members are naturally visible as men, , but they
are visible insofar as members of the Church— in other words they are
visibly members of the visible Church— because they participate in
what the Church herself accomplishes in a visible or outwardly mani-
fest way.

It must not be forgotten, moreover, that this notion of the body of
the Church, as contradistinguished from her soul, is a metaphorical
notion, an image drawn from the human being, which cannot be ap-
plied rigidly to an infinitely more mysterious reality. We understand
that better if we observe that, on one hand, the soul of the Church is
spiritual, as is the human soul (and more so), while on the other
hand, the body of the Church is no more separable (and even less so)
from her soul than the body of an animal not endowed with reason is
separable from its soul. But even more, the body of the Church defies
comparison with the human body in this respect, that the body of the
Church, completely and perfectly formed in the Church— who is her-
self fully formed, and whose organic unity is perfect and completed
by personality (in other words in the Only Church, the Catholic
Church)-— nevertheless oversteps beyond this perfectly formed organ-
ism to extend, just as the soul of the Church does— on one hand to
religious families that are still organized but not integrated into her
perfect unity (the non-Catholic Christian confessions), and on the
other hand to the great diaspora of those human beings who, in the
non-Christian religious families or in the areligious spiritual families,
open themselves to the grace of Christ and to charity.

How can we imagine this? We would have to resort to a fictitious
poetic image: let us say a large firebird of an extraordinary kind, which
would trail behind itself a living fire that is still its body animated by
its soul, but lacking the perfect organic unity proper to the bird itself.
This fire, as long as it still has some organic unity, is still visible to
men (less and less, the more distant it is from the perfect organic
unity that it enjoys in the bird); but it can also lose all organic unity,
in a vast galaxy of stars, in each of which it shines in a way that is vis-
ible to the angels but invisible to men, for the only unity which still
binds these stars to the other members of the body of the Church
is that of charity (which no doubt manifests itself in each one
through a certain behavior, but which, in this case, bears the mark of
the Church only in the eyes of the angels ). 1

1 Cf. Ch. 7, p. 181, n. 17.

* 7 6 JACQUES MARITAIN

In other terms, the Church is essentially visible, but this visibility
is full and complete only in the Catholic Church, and that is her
glory: only she bears the torch of God in its fullness, as only she is
the Church of the Incarnate Word. The body of the Church becomes
less and less visible the further those who belong to her in the other
spiritual families escape from her perfect unity. All these men are part
of the perfectly visible Church, but without being integrated into her
perfect unity and therefore into her perfect visibility.

Is it possible to elaborate this truth in greater detail? In my opinion
the answer is to be found in the communion of saints 2 — I mean in
the communion of saints understood not in reference to God , or in-
sofar as charity unites us to God (in this aspect the communion of
saints is but one with the soul of the Church), but in reference to
men , or in another of its aspects (too often neglected, except by
some men of great intuition like Leon Bloy), where charity unites to-
gether the human members of the Church through a mysterious in-
terdependence. From this point of view, is not the communion of
saints but one with the body of the Church? I believe it is. The com-
munion of saints is the Church herself. It is fitting, therefore, to dis-
tinguish in it an aspect that corresponds to the soul of the Church
and an aspect that corresponds to her body.

Let us consider the multitude of those “saints” living in grace and
charity— let us say those “just” or “righteous” ones— who are visible
members of the Church. Is not the supernatural solidarity that unites
together these visible members of the body of the Church— in a vast
human family “whose goods are marvelously reversible,” 3 a human
family that is much more than a “society” (it is a “communion”)
—is not this solidarity part of the body of the Church, just as are those
whom it binds one to the other? In the case in question this superna-
tural solidarity is made manifest, because these visible members of
the body of the Church are integrated into her perfect unity. But it is
not made manifest to the eyes of men there where the righteous ones,
the men who live in grace, are not integrated into the perfect unity of
the fully formed and fully visible Church; for these righteous men
have charity within them but charity lacking the three notes (“cultual,
sacramental, and oriented”) 4 which it has in the fully formed
Church and which enables it to receive the seal of the Church's per-
sonality. And they belong to the body of the Church, but in a state of

2 Cf. L’Eglise du Verbe Iticarne , v. II, pp. 662-667.

3 Op. cit. y p. 662.

4 Cf. p. 178, note 14, line 6.

THE PEASANT OF THE GARONNE

2 77

dispersion in the individual persons of a vast galaxy without organic
unity. The only unity that subsists among them and the other mem-
bers of the body of the Church is that of charity, that of the superna-
tural solidarity which unites all the just together in the communion of
saints, but the latter, this time, is not made outwardly manifest and
remains hidden in its mystery.

As a result, we understand better that a righteous man who is a
non-Christian is invisibly part of the visible Church, by reason of the
communion of saints; in-whith he participates, and which, when there
is no integration into the perfect unity of the fully formed Church, is
still— in the aspect I have indicated— the body of the Church, but this
time the body of the Church in a state that is invisible or not mani-
fest to the eyes of men.

The body of the Church is as mysterious as the Church herself.
Fully visible in the human multitude integrated into the perfect or-
ganic unity of the Catholic Church, it is, in the diaspora of righteous
men who live in the grace of Christ while remaining attached to non-
Christian spiritual families, invisible to the eyes of men and to the
eyes of these righteous men themselves. Which is not to say that the
body of the Church is ever, even there, absolutely invisible, or invisi-
ble "of itself/' Because even there it remains visible "of itself/' and
visible to the angels; but it is not visible to the eyes of men (except
perhaps, I should add, to the eyes of those among Christians who,
fully familiar with the spiritual families I am alluding to, and having a
sufficiently thorough knowledge of the righteous men in question,
would be able to discern in them the signs which make perceivable
the fact— unknown to themselves— that they invisibly belong to
Christ and to his visible Church. In general such a discernment
could only be more or less probable, but why could it not, in a given
instance, appear as certain to the Christians of whom I am speaking?
Massignon, who knew the mystics of Islam perfectly well, wished that
some day the Church would canonize Hallaj).